














































































/ 


TIGER 

RIVER 





j 

TIGER RIVER 

BY ARTHUR O. FRIEL 

Author of “THE PATHLESS TRAIL” 



Publishers 

HARPER & BROTHERS 
New York and London 
1923 





TIGER RIVER 

Copyright, 1923 
By Harper & Brothers 
Printed in the U.S.A. 

First Edition 
a -x 



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FEB i 6 *23 


©C1A688318 



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CONTENTS 


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CHAP. PAGE 

I. Where Waters Meet . i 

II. The River of Missing Men . n 

III. The Conquistador . 23 

IV. The Power of Gold. 35 

V. Eyes in the Bush . 48 

VI. In the Path of the Storm. 59 

VII. The Claw t s of the Tigre... 71 

VIII. The White Indians . 83 

IX. A Life for a Life. 95 

X. Red Spots. 106 

XI. The Looter. 118 

XII. Death Passes . 129 

XIII. Followed . 139 

XIV. Burning Sands. 149 

XV. Jose Takes a Chance... 161 

XVI. Three Pass Out. 175 

XVII. North . 185 

XVIII. The Toeless Man. 194 

XIX. The Golden Mountains. 205 

XX. Dead Man’s Land . 218 

XXI. Into the Abyss. 229 

XXII. The End of the Trail. 242 

XXIII. Circe... 254 

XXIV. Lost Souls. 268 

XXV. The Devil’s Brew. 281 

XXVI. Phantom Treasure. 293 

XXVII. The Head-hunters. 306 

XXVIII. The Mountains Speak . 317 

XXIX. Out of the Wall. 329 

XXX. The King of No Man’s Land. 341 




































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A 







TIGER 

RIVER 



TIGER 

RIVER 


CHAPTER I 

WHERE WATERS MEET 

AT the edge of the jungle a rifle roared. 

/-% High up among the branches of a tall 
buttress-rooted tree—more than a hun¬ 
dred feet above the soggy ground—a big, red, 
bearded monkey lurched out into space. Head¬ 
long he fell. A swift rip of breaking under¬ 
brush, a dull thump, and he lay lifeless on the 
earth. 

At the base of another tree a man quietly 
levered a fresh cartridge into his gun barrel. 
For a few seconds he stood motionless, weapon 
up, eyes sweeping the surrounding tree butts and 
bush clumps. Then he let the rifle sink and, 
velvet-footed, stepped forward. 

“So, Sehor Cotomono,” he said softly, “you 
will make your hideous howling, eh, to tell all 
the world that I am here? You will yell to the 
tigres of this Tiger Water to come and tear 
Jose Martinez, yes? Too late you learn that it 
does not pay to make too much noise with the 
mouth.” 


2 


TIGER RIVER 


A sardonic smile played under his fierce black 
mustache. Even as the words slipped from his 
tongue his gaze lifted from the motionless animal 
and once more plumbed the vistas about him. 
Tall, sinewy, hawk-nosed, bold-eyed, red-ker¬ 
chiefed, belted with a long machete, alert and 
wary as the great hunting-cat he had just men¬ 
tioned—he looked a buccaneer chieftain ma¬ 
rooned in a tropic wilderness, poised to fight 
man, beast, or demon. 

A minute passed. No sound came, except the 
ceaseless rustle of unseen small life creeping 
about in the shadows during the hot hours of mid¬ 
day. With a lightning shift of manner he relaxed. 

“Hah!” he growled. “Jose, you are over¬ 
careful. You have hardly left the Amazon— 
you have only just landed on the Tigre Yacu— 
and yet you stand as if you were far upstream 
and had shot a head-hunter instead of a poor 
cotomono. You disgust me, Jose mio. Come, 
little howler of the heights, and toast your toes 
at my fire.” 

In one motion he swooped up the dead mon¬ 
key and whirled on his heel. A few strides to 
the rear, and he halted at water: clear water, 
about seventy yards broad, flowing southeast, at 
whose margin floated a small canoe. Some rods 
downstream the limpid little river ended, merg¬ 
ing into a turbid yellow flood rolling eastward 

the mighty Amazon, here known as the 
Maranon. 


WHERE WATERS MEET 


3 


Two swift glances he shot to right and left— 
one upstream, one out at the tawny monarch of 
rivers. Only empty water, glaring under the 
sun, met his gaze. Leaning his rifle against a 
handy tree butt, he drew his machete and sliced 
some tindery bamboo into kindling. A few deft 
slashes with the same blade dressed the monkey 
for roasting. Then, adding more fuel, he 
squatted and concentrated his attention on th<; 
cooking of his meal. 

A stiff breeze came rocketing down the dear- 
water stream, snatching the smoke of his fire 
and flinging it playfully down to the great river. 
And almost at once, as if the tang of smoke and 
the savory odor of broiling meat had evoked 
life from the depths of that river, something 
came crawling into the yellow vacancy at the 
end of the jungle shores. Foot by foot, yard by 
yard, it nosed its clumsy way out of the west 
until its whole length floated there, only a little 
way from the land. There, for a moment, it 
hung motionless. 

A grotesque, misshapen monster of the jungle, 
it seemed: a low-bodied thing some thirty feet 
long, with half a dozen short, rigid legs on each 
side; a humpy creature with a small square bump 
in the middle, a big round one near its tail, and 
more than a dozen smaller protuberances along 
its back. Presently its little legs moved back-< 
ward, lifted, came forward—flashing glints of 
sunlight from its wet feet—and slid backward 


4 


TIGER RIVER 


again. Its blunt nose turned up the clear water. 
It grew larger, crawling toward the spot whence 
the smoke rolled. And the rough little breeze, 
as if it had done its duty in summoning the river- 
beast, passed and was gone, leaving the smoke 
to rise straight above the squatting man like a 
telltale finger. 

The man did not see the thing approach 
Around him stood waist-high grass, which now, 
in his doubled-up position, rose just above his 
head and shut off from his view all but the firq 
and his meat. The river-creature advanced 
quietly, as if a bit wary. Fifty feet off shore it 
paused. From it burst a roaring voice. 

“Hey there!” 

The man in the grass started, spun about, 
lengthened himself toward his rifle, and in one 
second was behind the tree with gun cocked. His 
narrowed eyes stabbed through the sun-glare at 
the clumsy thing which had slipped up so 
smoothly within pistol-shot of him. In one tight 
squint he saw what it was. 

A Peruvian garretea, or river-canoe, with a pile? 
of supplies corded in the middle, a curve-roofed 
cabin at the stern, twelve copper-skinned paddlers 
and a steersman, and four khaki-shirted white 
men: that was the monster. The second glance of 
the lurking Jose told him that all the white men 
were deeply tanned and well bearded; that two of 
the beards were black, one yellow, and one un¬ 
mistakably red. Then the voice spoke again. 


WHERE WATERS MEET 


5 


“Come on out, feller. We ain’t huntin’ no¬ 
body. I see ye got a bandanna on yer bean, so 
ye’d oughter be a white man. You savvy United 
States?” 

The eyes of Jose widened. 

“Por Dios !” he muttered. “Is it—it is not-— 
yet the voice is the same! And a red 
beard-” 

He stepped forth, rifle still ready but not 
aimed. 

“Si, I savvy, senor,” he answered. “Who 
comes?” 

“Friends,” clipped another voice. “Any objec¬ 
tion to our tying up here? Want to sell that 
meat?” 

“It is my dinner, senor, and not for sale,” 
Jose replied coolly, still squinting at the boat. 
“Tying up here is as you wish. I do not own 
this river.” 

“All right. We’ll shoot our own meat. 
Paddle!” 

At the command the paddlers swayed in 
unison. The garretea floated nearer. Then out 
broke the first voice. 

“Say, cap, lookit the guy! Ain’t he a dead 
ringer for ol’ Hozy, the lad that was with us 
last year on that there, now, Javaree river down 

below? By gosh, I wonder- Say, feller, 

mebbe this is a sassy question, but what’s yer 
name?” 

The speaker was the red-bearded, red-headed 




6 TIGER RIVER 

man: a broad-chested, muscular fellow whose 
blue eyes peered keenly from under a cupped 
hand and whose wide face glowed with eager¬ 
ness. Into the hawk face of Jose flashed the 
light of certainty. His teeth gleamed and his 
rifle sank. In three strides he was at the water’s 
edge. 

“It is the Sehor Tim!” he cried. “I thought 
—but I was not sure. And El Capitan McKay 
—Senor Knowlton—si, yo soy, amigos! It is I, 
Jose Martinez, at your service!” 

“Well, by thunder!” laughed the blond man. 
“Welcome to our company, Jose, old top! I’ll 
pump your arm off as soon as I can get out of 
this blooming boat. Give you a drink too—the 
occasion calls for a libation. Tim, break out a 
bottle of hooch.” 

“Right ye are, looey. Hozy, ol’ sock, ye sure 
are a sight for sore eyes—bokoo jolly, tray 
beans, like them frogs use to say in France. 
Oo-la-la! Look out there, ye gobs! Timmy 
Ryan is landin’, toot sweet.” 

And land he did—crowding between the In¬ 
dian paddlers and launching himself over the 
bow as it touched shore. As his boots plunked 
into the mud his right hand seized that of Jose 
and wrung it in a mighty grip. 

“Ye oP son-of-a-gun!” he chuckled. “Ye ol* 
slashin’, tearin’, hip-shootin’ death’s-head! Jest 
as homely and full o’ cussedness as ever, ain’t ye? 
Mind the time we blowed them Red Bone canni- 


WHERE WATERS MEET 


7 

bals all to glory? Gosh, that was a reg’lar 
scrap, I’ll tell the world!” 

“I remember it well,” laughed Jose. “But you 
need not break my hand, amigo. The Senor 
Knowlton seems to wish to use it.” 

The blond man too had landed, and now he 
shouldered the exuberant Tim aside and pro¬ 
ceeded to make good his promise to pump the 
Spaniard’s arm, meanwhile giving him a running 
fire of banter. After him, cool and unhurried, 
came a tall, black-bearded, wide-shouldered man 
whose set face and bleak gray eyes now were 
softened by a welcoming smile. Last of all de¬ 
barked a stocky man of medium height, with 
hat pulled well down over his brow. 

In contrast to the red Tim and the blond 
Knowlton, the blackbeard spoke no word as his 
hand grasped that of Jose; but his brief, hearty 
grip and direct gaze spoke what his tongue did 
not. And to him Jose gave a look and a tone of 
deeper respect than that accorded to his 
predecessors. 

“Capitan!” he bowed. Then, as their hands 
parted, he turned suddenly away. When he 
swung back his bold eyes were a trifle misty and 
his smile strained. 

“Pardon the weakness, senores,” he said. “It 
is sudden, this meeting. And there are few men 
who care to take the hand of Jose Martinez, 
outlaw—though there are many who would take 
his head.” 


8 


TIGER RIVER 


“Grrrumph! Let ’em come and git it—they’ll 
have a fat time bumpin’ ye off while this gang’s 
here, Hozy!” erupted Tim. “We don’t give a 
tinker’s dam if ye’re a dozen outlaws. Ye’re a 
square guy and ye’ve got no yeller streak, and 
we dang well know it. Besides which, there ain’t 
no law in this neck o’ the woods, unless they 
lugged some in since the last time we was here, 
which I sure hope they ain’t. They’s too much 
law in the world now, most of it made by crooks. 
But say, ain’t ye got a word for Dave Rand here ? 
Ye’d oughtet remember him.” 

He motioned toward the last man ashore, who 
stood impassively waiting. 

“Rand?” echoed Jose. “Senor Rand I do 

not : - Ho! Por Dios! Is this the man 

who was the Raposa—the Wild Dog of the 
Javary?” 

“The same,” answered Rand himself. As he 
spoke he lifted his broad hat, revealing green- 
gray eyes and dark hair in which an odd white 
mark stood out above one ear. 

“The man who was a crazy captive of the Red 
Bone Indians,” he went on, “and whom you last 
saw as a naked, painted wreck being dragged 
home to the States by McKay and Knowlton 
and Tim here. No wonder you didn’t recognize 
me. Shake ?” 

“Indeed yes, senor, with pride.” And the 
final handshake was completed. “But how come 
you here in South America again—and, of all 



WHERE WATERS MEET 


9 


places, on the banks of this dangerous water? 
You had best move on quickly, comrades, all of 
you.” 

Tim interrupted. 

“Aw, who’s scairt of a li’l brook like this? 
And say, feller, yer meat’s burnin’. Git out o’ 
me way and I’ll save it. We got to eat.” 

Jose wheeled, pounced, retrieved the blackened 
meat, and gazed at it ruefully. 

“A third of my dinner gone,” he grumbled. 
“But this cotomono was a big one, and we can 
each get a few mouthfuls of fresh meat from 
him. Your Indians can find meat of their own 
if they will hunt back from the water.” 

But the Indians seemed to want no meat. 
They did not even show any intention of land¬ 
ing. Every man of them had remained in the 
boat, and, though they sniffed wistfully at the 
odor of the cooking, their eyes were continually 
watching the thick tropical tangle near at hand. 
Uneasy mutterings went among them, and re¬ 
peatedly they grunted two words: 

“Tigre Yacu.” 

The northerners stared at them. Jose, the 
jungle rover, alone seemed to understand. He 
gave the paddlers a brief glance, nodded, and let 
his own gaze go roving upstream. 

“What ails them guys?” wondered Tim. “Is 
this place ha’nted or somethin’?” 

“This, Senor Tim, is the Tiger Water,” Jose ex¬ 
plained, “and it is bad country. Above here-” 



IO TIGER RIVER 

He stopped abruptly. Across his words smote 
a dread sound. 

From the jungle behind them broke a cough¬ 
ing roar: a hoarse, harsh, malignant note of 
menace which struck both brown and white men 
like a blow. It was the voice of the South 
American tiger, savage king of the jungle, eater 
of men; the voice of the Tigre Yacu, on whose 
banks lurked unknown things; the voice of 
Death. 


CHAPTER II 

THE RIVER OF MISSING MEN 

F OR a moment the jungle and the river 
were still. No man moved; and the rus¬ 
tle of small things in bush and branches 
was hushed as if all life held its breath. Then, 
calmly, tall Captain McKay spoke. 

“Sounds hungry. A hungry jaguar is bad 
medicine. Get aboard, men, and we’ll shove out 
a little. Come along, Jose. Want to talk to 
you.” 

Jose glowered into the tangle as if half 
minded to go seeking the tigre. But when 
Knowlton seconded the invitation he shrugged 
and nodded. 

“Climb in,” said the blond man. “Nothing 
to stay here for. The Indians won’t come 
ashore, your meat is cooked, and we can talk 
better where that brute won’t drop on some¬ 
body’s back. Besides,” with a laugh, “we have 
to dig up that bottle I spoke of.” 

“Your last reason is much the best one, sehor,” 
Jose grinned. “Now that I think of it, my 
throat is most dry.” 

Back into the garretea the white men clam¬ 
bered, and at once the paddlers shoved off. But 
for McKay’s sharp commands, they would have 


ii 


12 


TIGER RIVER 


driven the boat back to the Amazon. As it was, 
they reluctantly stopped work after a few 
strokes, and a moment later a sixty-pound weight 
plunged over the bow. Fifteen yards out, the 
boat swung at anchor. 

Four of the whites went aft to the shelter of 
the shady hoop-roofed cabin, which rose im¬ 
portantly from a ten-foot palm-bark deck. Tim, 
the fifth, halted amidships and sought something 
among the supplies, straightening up presently 
with a quart bottle on which the Indians fixed 
a longing gaze. Not until the red-bearded man 
entered the cabin did the aborigines take their 
eyes from his liquid treasure. Then they silently 
moved forward and made a fire in a big clay pot 
in the bow—the “galley” of their crude ship. 

“Wal, Hozy, oF-timer, here’s how!” pro¬ 
claimed Tim, flourishing the bottle. “Reg’lar 
stuff, this is—some o’ that there, now, Annie 
Sadder, double distilled and a hundred proof. 
Take a husky gargle of it before ye eat. Ye git 
more of a jolt on an empty stummick. Shoot!” 

Jose shot. The anisado gurgled down his 
throat like water. When he handed back the 
bottle his eyes glistened and a fourth of the 
liquor had disappeared from mortal view. 

“Gosh!” muttered Tim. “Half a pint to one 
swaller! Ye got me beat. But I’ll do me best.” 

Measuring off another half pint with a thumb¬ 
nail, he opened his capacious mouth, nipped his 
nose between his free thumb and forefinger, and 


THE RIVER OF MISSING MEN 


13 


let the bottle gurgle. Presently he gasped, shot 
the bottle to McKay, seized a gourd, and 
seemed to dive overboard; but his legs and body 
remained on the deck, and the gourd came up 
full of river water. Several gulps, and he arose, 
breathing hard. 

“That’s what we come up here for, anyways 
—clean water,” he alibied. “So I’m gittin’ mine 
now. That Ammyzon water is awright if ye let 
it settle, but she sure needs some settlin’. Don’t 
ye want a chaser, too, Hozy? No? Then eat 
somethin’ quick, before ye git vi’lent. We don’t 
want to have to light ye.” 

But Jose only grinned and licked his mus¬ 
tache, bowing to Knowlton as the latter saluted 
him with the bottle and took a short pull. Mc¬ 
Kay drank without a quiver. Rand barely 
touched the glass to his lips, then replaced the 
cork. 

“Hard case, this feller Rand,” winked Tim. 
“Last time he got holt of a bottle he swallered 
the whole dang thing and then chewed up the 
cork for a chaser. Right after that he sat down 
hard and the bottle busted inside him, so he has 
to go easy a few days. If ye don’t believe me, 
kick him, and ye’ll hear the glass jingle.” 

“You’ll be more likely to hear the angels sing¬ 
ing,” countered the green-eyed man, with a tight 
smile. “Fact is, Jose, I’m not drinking any 
more. Drink got me into hell once. Maybe you 
remember.” 


14 


TIGER RIVER 


The Peruvian nodded. 

“Si. It was drinking which got you into a 
fight at Manaos some years ago when you were 
traveling up the Amazon. You struck down a 
man—a German—so hard that you believed him 
killed, and you hid on a steamer and fled up the 
river. Then you went into the wild cannibal 
country on the Rio Javary, fought another Ger¬ 
man—Schwandorf—who tried to make you steal 
Indian women for his slave trade, and were shot 
in the head by that man. The bullet crazed you, 
and for years you wandered among the canni¬ 
bals, who let you live only because they feared 
you. The Raposa—the Wild Dog of the jun¬ 
gle! I heard of you long before I ever saw 
you.” 

“And if it hadn’t been for Mac and Merry 
Knowlton and Tim, who came hunting me and 
knocked sense back into my head with a gun 
butt, I’d be there yet,” Rand acquiesced grimly. 

Jose nodded again. 

“Es verdad. But that time is past, and you 
are a strong man once more. Yet I am much 
astonished to see you again in the jungle. If I 
have it right, these sehores came seeking you be¬ 
cause you were heir to a great estate and they 
were commissioned to find you. A North Ameri¬ 
can millionaire is the last kind of man I should 
expect to see here, even if he had not suffered 
here as you have.” 

Rand smiled wryly. 


THE RIVER OF MISSING MEN 


15 


“But I don’t happen to be a millionaire. I 
haven’t even a million cents, not to mention 
dollars.” 

“Por Dios! There were two million dollars 
—did you not say so, capitan? And that was 
hardly a year ago! How have you spent so 
much money in so short a time?” 

“Didn’t spend a cent of it. Never had it to 
spend.. It’s this way: 

“My uncle, Philip Dawson, died. His son, 
Paul, who fought in the great war, was supposed 
to have been killed in action in the Argonne 
Forest. So the Dawson estate was legally mine 
—for a while. 

“But Paul wasn’t killed. He was badly 
wounded, captured, and treated none too well; 
and he got aphasia—forgot who he was. The 
War Department mixed up things, recorded him 
as dead, and shipped home the body of some 
other soldier as his. A lot of those blunders 
happened in the war. 

“Just about the time these chaps were finding 
me down here, a friend of Paul’s found him over 
there. He was working as a field hand, and 
even thought he was a German—he had traveled 
a lot as a boy and could talk German as easily 
as English; so when he found himself among 
German people and didn’t know who he was or 
how he came there, he thought he belonged there. 
Of course his friend got him back to the States 
at once, and by the time I showed up he was 


16 


TIGER RIVER 


there in the hands of specialists who were bring¬ 
ing his memory back to him. So that let me 
out.” 

Jose carved a section of monkey haunch. Slic¬ 
ing it with careful exactness, he passed portions 
to his companions. All fell to chewing. 

“But I thtill do not thee, thenor,” lisped Jose 
then, his mouth nearly full, “why you return to 
thith plathe.” 

“We’re partners, chasing the rainbow,” 
Knowlton vouchsafed after swallowing his mor¬ 
sel. “We three were well rewarded for getting 
Dave back, even though he wasn’t the heir; the 
estate had to make good its contract with us. 
Dave wasn’t broke, either—he had some money 
of his own in a couple of banks. So we got rest¬ 
less, pooled our money, and came down to the 
Andes to make ourselves billionaires by finding 
the treasures of the Incas or anything else lying 
around loose. 

“But we were out of luck. We poked around 
the upper Maranon awhile and tried a couple of 
other prospects, but got nothing but hard knocks. 
So we got this boat and came along down. 
Thought we’d take a whirl at the Napo coun¬ 
try, just below here. Loads of gold in the 
Napo, we hear; Indians pick it out of the 
river bed, and so on. Want to join us and try 
your luck?” 

Jose did not answer at once. His black eyes 
searched the face of each man as if seeking 


THE RIVER OF MISSING MEN 17 

some sign of derision or amusement. He found 
none. 

“You jest, senor,” he said presently. 

“Not a bit of it. What do you say, Rod— 
Tim—Dave? Is Jose a welcome member of 
this gang?” 

“I’ll say he is!” rumbled Tim. The other two 
nodded decisively. 

The Peruvian’s face glowed. But he shook 
his head. 

“I thank you, senores, but I cannot. I have no 
such outfit as you, I have no money, I am not 
one of you but Jose Martinez—outlaw. I could 
not be on an equal footing-” 

“That’s rot, Jose,” McKay cut in. “If we 
didn’t want you we wouldn’t ask you. Money 
and outfit are immaterial. You have something 
we lack—intimate knowledge of this region. 
Put your knowledge in the pot with our outfit, 
and you owe nothing. Coming in?” 

Again Jose held his tongue before answering. 
Pride gleamed in his eyes, but those eyes went 
up the Tiger River as if visioning something the 
others could not see. Absently he rolled and 
smoked a cigarette. Not until he snapped the 
charred butt overboard did he speak. 

“Senores,” he said abruptly, “the tale of gold 
in the Napo is old. Too old. Everybody knows 
it. True, gold is there: gold dust washed from 
the Llanganati mountains of Ecuador. But men 
have known of it for hundreds of years. Many 



i8 


TIGER RIVER 


expeditions have gone in after it. Some have 
come out, some have not. Savages—accidents— 
fever—there are many white men’s bones in the 
Napo jungle. There will be many more. 

“Gold is there, yes. But why journey to the 
Napo, and hundreds of miles up the Napo—it 
is eight hundred miles long, amigos—to seek a 
thing which is nearer at hand? Why poke 
about a river where the workings are known 
and covered by lighting men, when before you 
opens a stream where you can take anything 
you find?” 

The Americans started. Their glances darted 
up the Tigre Yacu. 

“You mean-” Knowlton began. 

“Sssst!” Jose hissed warningly. 

Two of the crew were approaching, bearing 
salt fish and hot coffee to their patrones. The 
Peruvian eyed them narrowly, but none gave sign 
of having heard or understood the talk. Stol¬ 
idly they placed the food on the raised deck, 
turned, and went back to the bow. 

“Speak on,” said McKay. “They know no 
English except a few words like ‘paddle,’ and 
so on.” 

“Bueno. You guess it—I mean this Tigre 
Yacu. 

“Behold, companeros. It is but a little brook, 
yes, if one thinks of the great Maranon or the 
Napo. Yet it runs a long way up—one hundred 
fifty miles or more—and it is deep; canoes can 



THE RIVER OF MISSING MEN 


19 


travel far on it. And it heads between two long 
mountain spurs, which form the split end of the 
Cordillera del Pastassa. And that cordillera, 
amigos, is itself a spur from those same Llan- 
ganati mountains whence comes the gold of the 
Napo and its tributary river, the Curaray! 

“See. It is thus.” 

Dipping a finger into his coffee, he drew on 
the bark deck a figure somewhat like a crude, 
elongated letter “h.” Between the legs of this 
symbol he traced another line running southeast. 

“The long line is the Cordillera del Pastassa, 
the curved one its spur,” he explained. “And 
the third line is this Tigre Yacu. North of this 
cordillera runs the Curaray, which, as I say, 
bears gold. Some of its tributaries flow from 
this cordillera. Who shall say that the cordil¬ 
lera, an offshoot of the Llanganati, is not burst¬ 
ing with gold? Who shall say that much—or 
all—of the gold of the Curaray does not come 
from this cordillera instead of the Llanganati? 
Madre de Dios! Quien sabe?” 

His face was flaming now. And, looking into 
his hot black eyes, the blue and the gray and the 
green eyes of the northerners suddenly flared 
with the reckless light of the gold lure. Rainbow- 
chasers all, hardy, venturesome, fearless, they 
were of that red-blooded breed which plunges 
straight into the jaws of death if within those 
jaws lies a prize worth the daring. In one flash¬ 
ing instant the projected journey to the Napo 


20 


TIGER RIVER 


vanished from their minds like wind-blown mist. 
The Napo was old. The Tigre Yacu, unknown, 
mysterious, had caught them in a spell. 

It was McKay, canny and controlled, who 
spoke first. 

“If there’s gold here, why has it been passed 
by?” 

One laconic word answered him. 

“Jiveros.” 

“Hm. The head-hunters! Thought we were 
past their country.” 

“Oof! The Jiveros?” blurted Tim. “The 
fellers that shrink yer head to the size of an 
orange ? Them guys ?’ ’ 

“Them guys,” Jose echoed, with a slight smile. 
“Their country is farther west, as el capitan 
says: the rivers Pastassa, Morona, Santiago; 
but they know no boundaries and they roam far. 
It is more than possible that even now some of 
them lurk yonder in the bush, watching us. Wise 
men do not go up these rivers west of the Napo 
—only fools like Jose. 

“That was why I hesitated so long before tell¬ 
ing you of the treasure that may be up this 
stream. To risk my own life is nothing; to lure 
my friends into a death trap with me is much. 
But—we were together among the southern can¬ 
nibals not long ago. So I tell you.” 

He gulped some coffee. At once he went on: 

“Nor is that all. Somewhere up this stream 
is something—I know not what—which makes 


THE RIVER OF MISSING MEN 21 

men mad. I am not the first fool who has 
thought of gold up here and gone after it. How 
many men have gone in here I know not. But 
until recently no man has come out. 

“Two weeks ago came one Rafael Pardo down 
to Iquitos. A hard, reckless man he was; a 
killer and other things. I say he was. He no 
longer is. 

“Months ago he went up this Tigre Yacu, 
boasting that he feared no man, beast, God or 
devil. Days ago he came back, naked, bearded, 
filthy, raving. But with him he brought gold. 
A hide bag he had, and it was heavy with nug¬ 
gets. Yes, nuggets, not dust. His skin was 
seamed with scars like those of a whip. His 
toes were gone—every one cut off. How he 
walked through the jungle, how he lived without 
weapons, I do not know. But he came—and he 
brought gold.” 

“Did anyone learn what he had been 
through?” asked Rand. 

“No. He was utterly mad. He screamed 
frightful things, but such as made no sense. 
Then some one stole his gold. When he found 
it gone he ran about yelling, fell down frothing, 
and died.” 

For a long minute there was silence. All 
peered up the stream. The flush of excitement 
had died from their faces, but no indecision or 
fear showed in them. Their jaws were set and 
their eyes narrowed as if they were sizing up an 


22 


TIGER RIVER 


enemy. And they were. In each man’s mind 
flamed a challenge to the river of missing men. 

Then, all at once, their heads jerked to the 
right. The Indians in the bow had risen from 
their squat and were facing toward the spot 
where the Peruvian’s little fire had smoked, and 
where his canoe still lay. The blaze now had 
died. And through the waist-high grass some¬ 
thing large, something stealthy, was creeping 
from the jungle. 


CHAPTER III 

THE CONQUISTADOR 

R EADY rifles slid out from the cabin. 
From four of them sounded the quiet 
snicks of safeties being thrown off. The 
hammer of Jose’s big-bulleted repeater clicked 
dully and poised at full cock. 

“The shot is mine, amigos,” he reminded 
them. So, of the five guns, his was the only 
one to take aim. 

The telltale grass stood still. For a breath¬ 
less minute no sign of movement was visible. 
Slowly then it swayed again above the creeping 
thing, marking another few inches of advance. 
Crash! 

Jose’s muzzle jumped. Blue smoke drifted 
along the water. The grass shook. From it 
burst a screech of appalling fury. 

The dense growth of green split. At the 
water’s edge a great black cat creature 
poised, eyes glaring, fangs gleaming, tail thrash¬ 
ing the grass like a maddened snake. On 
one ebony shoulder a streak of red flowed and 
widened. 

“Hah-yah!” mocked Jose, his own teeth bared 
in a tigerish snarl. “Here am I, you devil! 
Come to me!” 


23 


24 


TIGER RIVER 


The devil came. 

In one leap it shot ten feet from the bank. Its 
big paws, with long claws unsheathed, com¬ 
menced swimming almost before its powerful 
body splashed. Eyes fixed in malevolent hate 
on the man who had wounded and mocked it, 
teeth still bared in a soundless snarl, the brute 
lunged straight for the boat. 

From the Indians broke guttural gasps of fear. 
From the white men sounded short growls. 
From four high-power rifles cracked whip-like 
reports. From the Peruvian’s black-powder gun 
another blunt roar thumped out. 

The black tiger, suddenly motionless, sank in 
a red welter. 

“Guess it was just as well that we did our 
talking out here,” Knowlton observed. “Sorry 
to horn into your party, Jose, but I just had to 
slam a bullet into that fellow.” 

“It is nothing, senor. I had first blood—and 
last.” Then, grinning, he added: “I have made 
a good beginning on the Tigre Yacu. I have 
shot a black tiger and a curaca.” 

“Curaca? A chief? How come?” 

“Ha, ha, ha ! That is my little joke. ‘Curaca’ 
means an Indian chief. But the male cotomono 
monkey, with his long beard, also is called 
‘curaca.’ You have just eaten some of my chief- 
monkey.” 

“Umph! Feller’s got to be eddicated to git 
these here South American jokes,” muttered 


25 


THE CONQUISTADOR 

Tim. “So I been chewin’ a chief’s leg, hey? 
’Twas tough stuff, anyways.” 

“If you go up this stream with me, Senor Tim, 
you may have to eat worse things before you 
come out,” was the ominous reply. “But our 
coffee cools. Let us finish it.” 

Back in the shade of the cabin the five chewed 
and sipped in the silence of thought. When 
nothing but bare bones and empty gourds re¬ 
mained and tobacco was burning, Knowlton 
reached to a peg at one side, took down a roll 
of rubberized fabric, extracted a number of 
maps, and spread one on the bark floor. After 
a moment of study he nodded. 

“Your cordillera starts from the Llanganati, 
all right,” he said. “And it splits into spurs, 
with the Tigre starting between them. Guess 
this country has been explored.” 

“I think not, senor,” Jose differed. 

“Then how would the map makers know what 
was in there?” 

“How do I know what is in there?” the jungle 
rover countered. “Because I have talked with 
Indians who know. Canoemen of the Napo, 
they were, whom I met on the Amazon. Is it 
not quite likely that the maps were made by men 
who never have been here, but who have taken 
the word of others who in turn had asked 
Indians?” 

The blond Northerner was momentarily 
silenced. But presently he added: “Well, see 


26 


TIGER RIVER 


here. The map agrees with you as to the moun¬ 
tains, but it gives this country east of the Cor¬ 
dillera del Pastassa to the Zaparos, not the 
Jiveros. The Jiveros are west of the Rio 
Pastassa.” 

A faint smile twitched the Spanish mouth. 

“Si? That is a great relief, senor. Now we 
can go on without caution. If we meet Jiveros 
and they seek to cut oh our heads, behold! we 
shall show them that map and tell them they 
have no right here, and they will go speeding 
back to the Pastassa.” 

Tim snickered. McKay and Rand smiled 
broadly. Knowlton flushed, laughed in a vexed 
way, and shoved the map back among the others. 

“Faith, bein’ an army officer gits a feller into 
lots o’ bad habits,” remarked Tim. “These two 
guys, Hozy, was officers in the big war, ye see; 
Cap was a real cap’n and li’l ol’ Blondy Knowlton 
was me looey—lieutenant. Course, they had to 
use maps a lot, and them maps o’ Europe are 
right: everything’s jest like the map says, except 
mebbe the enemy. So looey got so used to be¬ 
lievin’ the map he ain’t quite got out o’ the habit 
yet. But say, what kind o’ guys are them there— 
uh—whaddye call ’em, looey?” 

“Zaparos.” 

Jose waved a contemptuous hand. 

“Animals. Wandering beasts of the forest, 
nothing more. They are short, flat of nose, with 
little eyes set slanting in their heads. They can- 


THE CONQUISTADOR 27 

not count above ten, and for any number above 
three they must use their fingers. They have no 
towns, make only flimsy huts, live apart from 
each other in any place they like, then move on 
elsewhere. The only thing they make is the 
hammock: they are the hammock makers of the 
Provincia del Oriente. Oh, I was forgetting— 
they make also a drink called ayahuasca; but it 
is the stupid drink of a stupid people, which only 
makes one sleep. They are not even interesting. 
There is no danger from them.” 

“Uh-huh. Wal, what about the head-shrinkin’ 
fellers? They sure oughter be interestin’.” 

The outlaw smiled grimly. 

“You have said it, Senor Tim. There, amigos, 
is a race of men! Never have they been con¬ 
quered. Neither my people of Spain nor the old 
Incas before us could make them bend their necks. 
They are fighters—fighters like my own an¬ 
cestors, who, por Dios, were no such sleek pot¬ 
bellied politicians as the men of Peru now have 
become! And though I do not intend to lose 
my head to any man, and will fight like ten devils 
to keep it, if it must be lost I would rather give it 
to the warriors of the Jiveros than to the sneak¬ 
ing, foot-lapping police of my own race. Si!” 

His swarthy face, tanned deep by years of 
jungle sun, twisted in sudden savage bitterness. 
Abruptly he shot up to his full height, took a 
pantherish step, whirled, gazed slit-eyed at the 
four who had made him their partner. 


28 


TIGER RIVER 


“Listen to me!” he rasped. “I, Jose Mar¬ 
tinez, am of the Conquistadores! In me runs 
the blood of a man who dared the seas—dared 
the Andes—dared the jungle—and made this a 
land of Spain! But for him and his comrades, 
what would this Peru—that Ecuador—Colom¬ 
bia, Venezuela, the accursed Chile, Argentina— 
what would they be to-day? Indian lands. The 
strong hand, the cold steel, the fire and blood of 
my fathers, won all this great country. 

“And what are their sons to-day? Perros 
amarillos! Yellow dogs! Dogs who yelp out 
from among them like a wild beast a man who 
still has the strength of his ancestors—dogs who 
hide behind their police—dogs who fight only 
with cunning and treachery and law, law, law! 

“The Conquistadores were heroes, because 
they fought and killed. I am an outlaw, because 
I have fought and killed. Yet never have I killed 
a man who would not kill me. Not that I have 
always waited to be attacked—else I should be 
dead, long since. I have seen the death in a 
man’s eye and I have acted. So I live. But I 
live with a price on my head. Why? Because 
I first killed a greasy politician, beyond the moun¬ 
tains, who had sent hired tools to murder me 

because he wanted my woman-” 

He broke off jhort and struggled for control. 
But the flood of his fury burst forth again. 

“The slime! The crawling scum! I killed 
him—sil—and his paid assassins too I killed. 



THE CONQUISTADOR 


29 


Hah! But he was a politician—a maker of 
laws. His brother makers of laws lashed the 
police—the army—all of Peru—on my trail. 
So am I an outlaw. 

“Bueno! So be it. I am a man. I am among 
men. If I lose my head to those Jiveros I lose 
it to men. And my bones will rest quiet, and 
my shrunken head hanging in a Jivero hut will 
grin at men—fighting men!” 

His chin lifted sharply, and his eyes blazed at 
the farther shore. As if he saw Jiveros there, he 
did grin—a hard, deadly grin. And the four 
North Americans silently watched him level-eyed 
and knew he spoke truth. Piratical, flamboyant, 
fiery and fearless, he needed only a coat of mail 
and a sword to become the reincarnation of the 
long-dead conquerors whose iron will and bloody 
deeds had crushed a continent. He was a man 
born too late to live in the Peru beyond the 
mountains; but here in El Oriente, where the 
quick hand and the ready steel still ruled, he 
was at home. In him blazed the same flame 
that had burned in the veins of Pizarro, Orel¬ 
lana, Aguirre, and their bold and violent fol¬ 
lowers; and it would drive him up this Tigre 
Yacu, to gold or to death, as it had driven them 
into the dread jungles of the Napo and the 
Huallaga. 

Slowly the fire in his face died out. At length, 
with a shrug, he turned back to them. 

“But you would hear of those Jiveros, not of 


30 


TIGER RIVER 


Jose,” he deprecated. “Something of them and 
their habits you must have learned before now, 
but I will speak what comes to my mind. 

“They too are wanderers, like the Zaparos; 
but in no other way are they like those sluggish 
ones, and even in their wanderings they differ. 
Instead of miserable palm-leaf shelters separated 
one from another, they build at chosen places 
two or three strong houses of logs standing on 
end, each house holding fifty or more people, 
and a tower for use in fighting enemies who at¬ 
tack them. When they move to another place 
all go together; and they move every few 
months, no matter how good the place where 
they are. It is in their blood, senores: they can 
no more live years in one spot than a tigre can 
make himself a house cat. 

“Often they move back to some other place 
where they have been before and where their old 
houses wait, but it is not always so. Many times 
they go on and build new fortresses and plant 
new crops. And when the drive to go becomes 
too strong to be satisfied by this moving about, 
they strike out in fierce raids far from their old 
homes, killing all men who block their way. 

“They fight with the poisoned arrow, the 
spear, the club, and sometimes with ax and 
knife and gun. In time of peace they trade rub¬ 
ber and gold for steel weapons—at Macas and 
Canelos and Loja—but they are so often at war 
that they cannot keep themselves in ammunition; 


THE CONQUISTADOR 


3 i 


so they do not depend much on their guns. And 
one of the big tribes of the Jiveros—the Huam- 
bisas of the Santiago—will seldom trade with 
the whites, so they have no guns, except those 
taken from white men killed while hunting gold 
in their region. But they need none. Their own 
weapons are more than enough.” 

“Yeah,” nodded Tim. “Specially that there 
poison that kills ye if the arrer only scratches ye, 
but leaves ye fit to eat. I s’pose these guys bar¬ 
becue the rest of ye after they git yer head off, 
hey?” 

“No,” Jose smiled. “They are not cannibals. 
All they do to you after you are dead is to 
shrink your head, and perhaps braid your hair 
into a belt made from the hair of other slain 
men. The Jivero who kills you, amigo, will 
surely put your red hair into his girdle. It will 
shine brightly among the black strands.” 

“Yeah? Well, feller, unless he gits me from 
behind he’ll sure have a two-handed job givin’ 
me that hair cut. What kind o’ lookin’ guys are 
they? Reg’lar tough mugs, prob’ly, that smell 
out loud.” 

“But no, amigo. They are most clean, and 
take much care of themselves. They bathe often, 
and whatever thing they get from a white man 
they wash at once. The one thing of which they 
have fear is disease, for many of their people 
have died of smallpox and measles and other ills 
caught while trading at towns; so they are sus- 


32 TIGER RIVER 

picious of all things belonging to strangers until 
washed. 

“Many of them are light of skin and have 
beards, with faces like those of Spaniards burned 
by sun. It may even be that some Spanish blood 
is in the veins of such men. I have heard that 
long ago—three hundred years or more—the 
Jiveros and the Spaniards fought a bitter war in 
which the white men were swept out of this land, 
and the wives of those Spaniards hacf to become 
the women of the Indian conquerors. If that 
be true, the Spanish children born to those women 
after capture would grow up as Jiveros. It may 
be so—I know not. But I do know this: that up 
this very Tigre Yacu are white Indians! 

“The Yameos, they are. White Indians who 
are restless rovers; they even cross the great 
Maranon and journey hundreds of miles south¬ 
ward up the Ucayali. Little is known of them. 
But it is known that they are white.” 

“Maybe more will be known about them when 
yve come out,” commented Rand. 

“Si—when we come out. Many things may be 
known about this river—when we come out. But 
before coming out we must go in. Yes? No?” 

There was a short pause. Captain McKay’s 
keen gray gaze plumbed each face. Then he 
perfunctorily suggested: “Contrary-minded, vote 
no.” 

Instead, his three mates nodded. Jose 
smiled. 


THE CONQUISTADOR 33 

“It seems that I am to have company,” he 
observed. 

“Seems like this game has swapped ends,” 
Tim grinned. “Li’l while ago we thought we 
was electin’ ye: now ye’re adoptin’ us. Wal, 
let’s go.” 

“Not so fast,” Jose demurred. “There must 
be a new boat. And fewer men.” 

“Correct,” approved McKay. “Boat’s too 
big. Indians won’t go up here. Got to shake 
them and paddle our own canoe. But can we 
get a smaller craft?” 

“I think so, capitan. Just below here is a 
small settlement, San Regis. It is not much—a 
few huts on the bank, that is all—but canoes are 
there. No doubt you can make a trade. But— 
no word of where we go, comrades.” 

“Sure,” agreed Knowlton. “This little cruise 
is strictly private. All aboard for San Regis, 
then. Popero!” 

In answer to the summons, the steersman arose 
from the group of Indians still clustered around 
the cooking pot. His mates, facing aft, watched 
and listened. Sullen dread lest they be com¬ 
manded to go farther up the Tigre Yacu was 
stamped plain on their faces. 

“Abajo. Downstream,” McKay ordered. 

The face of the popero lit up. The sulky 
expressions of the paddlers vanished. With 
monkeylike agility the steersman swung himself 
atop the cabin roof. Eagerly the others turned 


TIGER RIVER 


34 

to haul up the crude anchor. When its wet 
bulk glistened again in the bow they scrambled 
to their places in haste to be gone. 

“I think, amigos, I will await you here,” said 
Jose, as the big craft began to surge around. 
“If you will land me —-” 

“Hitch your canoe astern,” Knowlton inter¬ 
posed. “We’ll all get plenty of paddling soon. 
Take it easy while you can.” 

“Ah, yes. But it may be as well for you if I 
am not seen with you. I am not well known up 
here, more than three hundred miles above the 
Javary, but a bad name travels far.” 

“Rot!” snapped McKay. “You’re our part¬ 
ner. That’s enough. Unless, of course, you’d 
rather not run the risk-” 

“Ho! Risk? Jose Martinez skulks from no 
town, capitan! Who would imprison me must 
first take me.” 

His fierce mustache bristled, and his right 
hand tapped the hilt of a knife under his waist¬ 
band. McKay nodded shortly. 

“Then you ride here,” was his curt answer. 

A word to the steersman, and the garretea 
swung shoreward. Tim, grabbing a length of 
fiber cord, clambered to the extreme stern. 
While every Indian eye anxiously searched the 
grass and the trees, the big boat halted at the 
bank long enough to allow the taking in tow of 
the Peruvian’s canoe. Then it sheered off and 
slid away toward the yellow water below. 




CHAPTER IV 

THE POWER OF GOLD 

O UT into the turbid flood of the continental 
stream plowed the long boat. There the 
paddlers settled themselves for their 
regular long-distance stroke. Hardly had they 
begun to sweat, however, when their tall cap¬ 
tain ordered them to swerve toward a cleared 
space on the high left bank, where the peaked 
roofs of a few dingy clay houses showed against 
the encompassing wall of the jungle. 

Bewilderment showed in their brown faces as 
they glanced back toward the cabin, but they 
obeyed without hesitation. Once more on the 
broad Maranon, with the demon water of the 
Tigre left behind, whatever the white men said 
was right. 

Into a sizable cove below the village they 
floated. Up ahead, sheltered by the land from 
the power of the giant of waters, a number of 
canoes lay at the shore; and from them a crude 
footpath—hardly more than a gully in the clay 
—rose to the village. Down that path were 
coming a couple of wooden-faced Indians, shirt¬ 
less but wearing tattered breeches; and as the 
garretea slowed to a stop they also stopped, 
staring. 


35 


TIGER RIVER 


36 

“Umph. We don’t git no four-man boat 
here,” declared Tim, after a glance along the 
meager stock of canoes. 

“A couple of three-man dugouts will do,” 
said Knowlton. “Put two men in each and split 
the outfit. There’s one three-man boat over yon¬ 
der. Looks good, too. Find another and we’re 
fixed.” 

But finding the other was not so easily done. 
The others all were too small—all, that is, except 
one hulking craft at the end of the line, which 
bore a striking resemblance in size and shape to 
the garretea of the adventurers. At this Jose 
scowled. 

“We come at a bad time,” he muttered. 
“Traders are here. Ho, Indios! Whose boat 
is that?” 

The staring pair on the footpath did not 
answer. One mumbled growlingly to the other, 
and they resumed their downward way, turning, 
at the bottom, toward the long boat. 

“Sangre de Cristo!” snarled the Peruvian, his 
eyes snapping. “Put me ashore! I w T ill put 
tongues in the heads of the surly dogs!” 

McKay, unspeaking, motioned shoreward. 
The popero grunted, and the paddlers sank their 
blades. 

“Go easy, Jose,” Knowlton cautioned. “We 
come here to trade, not to fight.” 

“Es verdad. But let those Indians escape with 
their insolence, and what trade should we make?” 


THE POWER OF GOLD 


37 

Without awaiting a reply, he made a flying- 
leap to the stern of a dugout near at hand; 
landed cat-footed, and in three more bounds was 
ashore. Fierce face shoved forward, red ker¬ 
chief flaring sinister in the sun, he strode at the 
two Indians. 

One of them, cowed by the truculence of the 
outlaw’s eye, gave back. The other stood his 
ground and dropped a hand to the hilt of a 
machete. The menace of his attitude was plain. 
But Jose did not honor him by drawing his own 
steel. 

His open hand shot out, the heel of it smack¬ 
ing sharply on the coppery jaw. The Indian 
went down as if slugged by a clenched fist. 

“Whose boat is that?” rasped the son of the 
Conquistadores. 

The second Indian, cringing, answered 
promptly this time. 

“Maldonado, from Moyobamba, senor.” 

“Moyobamba!” Jose spat the name as if it 
were a curse. “You are his man? Why in ten 
devils did you not answer when I called ? Where 
is that accursed Moyobambino master of yours?” 

The man retreated another step, blinking with 
fear, and pointed a hand up the bank. 

“So. He shall soon see me. And you, you 
dog—when next a white man speaks to you, 

answer at once and civilly. If you do not- 

Ho! you on the ground, who said you could get 
up? Down, you misborn whelp!” 



38 


TIGER RIVER 


With which he lifted one bare foot, jammed it 
into the face of the rising man, and slammed him 
down again. Whereafter he gave him a tongue- 
lashing lurid with oaths and picturesque threats, 
the last of which was that if he moved before he 
was whistled to he would have his entrails cut 
out and tied around his neck. With a final 
glare at both of them, Jose spun about and 
stalked back to the Americans, who now had 
landed. 

“Their master is a sneaking Moyobambino 
trader, one Maldonado,” he announced. “If you 
know not the Moyobambinos, learn now that 
they are cheating, lying, thieving dogs, known 
from Lima to Para for their rascally tricks. 
Their one thought is money. If one of them 
heard that a dead man with three pesetas in his 
pocket lay on the shore, he would not rest until 
he had srpelled out the corpse and torn the money 
from it. Such is the Moyobambino.” 

“Seems to me I’ve heard of those fellows,” 
said Knowlton. “They’re called ‘the Jews of 
the Andes.’ ” 

“Just so, teniente. And the name is a com¬ 
pliment to them and an insult to the Jews. A 
Jew can sometimes be trusted—a Moyobambino 
never. 

“One of the worst massacres on this Maranon 
was caused by one of those curs. It was at Santa 
Teresa, between the rivers Santiago and Mo- 
rona—a town which exists no more. 


THE POWER OF GOLD 


39 


“A party of bold young men from the Rio 
Mayo determined to seek gold on the Santiago, 
though that is the country of the fierce Huam- 
bisas. They started up the Maranon to carry 
out their plan. But there was a dirty dog of a 
Moyobambino trader, one Canuto Acosta, to 
whom some of the Santa Teresans owed a little 
gold dust; and he was worried lest the coming of 
the gold hunters might spoil his chance of col¬ 
lecting his paltry debt. So he scurried up the 
river ahead of them and reached the little town 
just as a big party of Huambisas came in from 
the Santiago to trade. 

“To these bloody savages he said that a great 
army of white men was coming up the river to 
crush their tribe and make them slaves. The 
Huambisas at once killed every man in the town 
—forty and seven of them—and carried away 
sixty women as their slaves. They left alive only 
two boys, whom they put on a raft and sent down 
the river to tell the gold-hunters they would kill 
them also if they came on. So, senores, one 
hundred and seven people went to death or misery 
because of one lying Moyobambino.” 

“Huh! And I s’pose the mutt that done it got 
away with a whole hide,” growled Tim. 

“No. He was the first man killed.” 

“Yeah? Good!” 

“Good indeed, comrade. If only the Huam¬ 
bisas had stopped with killing him—but that is 
not their way. Nor is it the way of Moyobam- 


TIGER RIVER 


40 

binos to let other men get money if they also can 
smell it. What that Acosta did, this Maldonado 
would do if he suspected where we go and why. 
He would try to betray us in some way, if only 
to keep us from finding treasure he could not 
have. Capitan, if the misbegotten cur seeks to 
know our business, let me handle him.” 

McKay’s set lips twitched slightly. 

“He’s your meat,” he agreed. “I’ll handle 
the trade, though. Tim, stick here on guard.” 

“Right, cap.” The red-haired man swung his 
left hand carelessly to his gun barrel in rifle 
salute. “Whistle to yer dog, Hozy. He’s git- 
tin’ restless.” 

Jose, glancing back at the forgotten Indian 
whom he had downed, chuckled harshly as he 
found the man still on the ground. He gave a 
sharp whistle and lifted a finger. The Indian 
lurched to his feet and slunk away toward the 
farther end of his master’s boat. 

Up the slope clambered the four, each carry¬ 
ing his rifle. Tim got back on board and leaned 
against the cabin, where he could watch every¬ 
thing without effort. The crew lounged at ease, 
incurious, unaware that their voyage down the 
river was likely to end here. The two men 
of the Moyobambino effaced themselves by 
entering their own craft and squatting in the 
bow. 

At the top of the bank the northerners threw 
one glance around the weedy, slovenly little vil- 


THE POWER OF GOLD 


4i 


lage, wrinkled their noses at the odor of decay¬ 
ing offal, and headed for a damp-looking mud- 
walled house around which clustered a knot of 
sluggish men and frowsy women—Indians and 
mestizos. A boy, spying the approach of the 
newcomers, let out a shrill yell. The adults 
turned with a suddenness that sent a small cloud 
of flies buzzing up off their unclean skins. 

“Estranjeros!” shrieked a number of the 
women. Then, perceiving that these strangers 
were white senores, they began simpering with 
affected shyness and furtively attempted to pat 
their hair into something approaching tidiness. 
The men simply stood and gaped. 

With the aggressive stride of the dominant 
race, the four tramped straight up to the mon¬ 
grel pack before speaking. The townspeople, 
scanning the bleak face of McKay, and meeting 
the hard eye of Jose, involuntarily shrank to¬ 
gether, presenting a compact front. 

“Buenas tardes, amigos,” spoke McKay. 
“Where is your head man?” 

“Within, senor,” answered a fat, pompous- 
looking mestizo. “The Jefe Pablo Arredondo. 
But he is engaged in affairs of business.” 

“So. We bring him further affairs. Have the 
goodness to step aside.” 

“But the Senor Torribio Maldonado-” 

began the important one. 

“Can step aside also,” McKay broke in. “We 
have haste.” 



42 


TIGER RIVER 


“And we dislike the smell of your flyblown 
town too much to wait,” Jose added with a hard 
grin. 

The fat yellow man swelled as if mortally in¬ 
sulted. Then, catching the glimmer under the 
black brows of the outlaw, he suddenly began 
laughing in a scaled way and backed a step. 

“Enter, amigos t” he squeaked. “Ha, ha, ha! 
A rich joke! He, he, he!” 

With a contemptuous glance Jose forthwith 
began shouldering his arrogant way through 
to the door. The three northerners, with less 
violence but no less firmness, pressed the 
townsmen aside and forced a path which other¬ 
wise might not have opened to them for an 
hour. A moment later they were inside the 
musty house. 

The “affairs of business” were in plain sight 
on a rickety table. They comprised the contents 
of a large bottle, which the Sehor Torribio Mal¬ 
donado and the civic authority evidently had 
already discussed to some extent; for the bottle 
was far from full, while the head man showed 
slight signs of being on the way to becoming so. 
His greasy face was heavy with liquor and dis¬ 
pleasure at being disturbed. One direct look at 
him told the newcomers that trading might be a 
protracted affair involving much patience and 
diplomacy—unless a shrewd stroke could be de¬ 
livered at the outset. McKay instantly decided 
on-the nature of that stroke. 


THE POWER OF GOLD 


43 


But first he and his companions studied the 
other man, whose predatory face hung over the 
table like that of a vulture. Hook-beaked, slit¬ 
mouthed, beady-eyed, scrawny of neck and humpy 
of shoulder, with one skinny hand lying like a 
curved talon on the table—there was no need to 
ask if he was a Moyobambino. Already his 
cunning eyes were agleam with speculation as to 
whether he could make anything out of these 
travelers. 

McKay turned his gaze back to the frowning 
visage of the big man of the village. Without 
speaking, he casually drew from a pocket a gold 
coin and flipped it whirling into the air. In a 
shaft of sunlight shining in at a small side win¬ 
dow the spinning gold flashed yellow darts at 
the two men beyond the table. Into the sodden 
face of Arredondo leaped an answering flash of 
life. 

Gold! Gold money! Here where money was 
so scarce that canoemen were paid with stingy 
yards of cloth and business was done by primitive 
barter, where a paltry peseta was something to 
be proudly exhibited and a silver sol was to be 
hoarded—gold money, tossed carelessly into the 
air! The glittering rise and fall of that coin 
accomplished more than half an hour of patient 
talk would have done. Hardly had it thudded 
softly back into McKay’s palm when the greasy 
one was leaning forward, his loose lips writhing 
in an ingratiating grimace. The Moyobam- 


TIGER RIVER 


44 

bino—his hand had clenched like the claws of 
a swooping hawk. 

“Senores!” gurgled Jefe Pablo. “What is 
your pleasure?” 

“Canoes,” laconically answered the captain, 
closing his hand but allowing the rim of the yel¬ 
low disk to peep out between his fingers. “Two 
three-man canoes. For them we will trade a fine 
large garretea.” 

“A garretea!” The other’s face fell. “What 
should we of San Regis do with so big a boat? 
And two canoes of that sort —no hay” 

“There is one in the port,” disputed McKay. 
“Think hard, my friend. There must be 
another.” 

“No hay f ” was the doleful answer. 

Then the Senor Torribio Maldonado in¬ 
truded himself. 

“Amigo mio—querido amigo mio,” he began. 

“Liar!” spat Jose. “No man is your ‘dear 
friend.’ No man wishes to be. Hold your 
tongue!” 

The man of Moyobamba, after one look, 
obeyed. Meanwhile McKay took another 
tack. 

“Then we must keep our garretea. Also we 
keep our gold. If there were canoes—but there 
are none. Good day.” 

Dropping the coin back into a pocket, he 
turned doorward. 

“Wait!” blurted the pride of San Regis. “If 


THE POWER OF GOLD 45 

there were canoes, you would buy them—with 
gold?” 

“Yes. But —no hay.” McKay took a step 
outward. 

“Senor! Have the goodness to wait—one lit¬ 
tle moment. One canoe there is, si. And-” 

“That canoe is mine, Pablo!” yelled Maldo¬ 
nado. “Before these strangers came you agreed 
to let me have it, and also to give me a new crew 
for my big boat-” 

“-And now it comes to my mind that 

there is another,” pursued the greasy one, 
ignoring the trader. “I had forgotten—it is 
just finished—it will be put into the water 
immediately, Caballero mio! Mariano—Juan 
—Mauricio—you others! Put beside the 
garretea of these gentlemen the new canoe! 
At once!” 

“But it is mine—they are mine!” screeched 
the Moyobambino. “I will sell them to you, 
senores-” 

“You have not paid for them,” Arredondo 
harshly retorted. “So they are not yours. 
Senor—Capitan—that is real gold in your hand? 
You will give it me now? How much?” 

“Twenty gold dollars of the United States 
of America,” McKay solemnly answered, open¬ 
ing his hand halfway. “Gold. Gold of the 
finest. You shall have it when we have the 
canoes.” 

“Santo Domingo! San Pedro! Madre de 






TIGER RIVER 


46 

Dios! The canoes are mine!” roared Maldo¬ 
nado. “He has no right to sell them. Give the 
gold to me!” 

Jose burst into a roar of mirth. The others 
grinned. 

“Oho-ho-ho!” yelped the outlaw. “A Moyo- 
bambino beaten in a trade! Twenty golden dol¬ 
lars, Torribio, which go not into your claws! 
Yah-hah-ha! It is too good!” 

The trader, beside himself, sprang up, knock¬ 
ing over the flimsy table. Like a flash Jose’s 
face froze. 

“Sit, senor!” he said softly, a sinister sibilance 
in his tone. For one instant the other glared— 
for one instant only. Then, his face that of a 
man who had just looked Death in the eye, he 
slowly, very carefully, sank back. He still sat 
there when the adventurers and the greedy- 
mouthed Arredondo had passed outside. 

But, a little later, when the two new canoes 
were hitched to the garretea and all San 
Regis stood clustered on the bank, the man of 
Moyobamba appeared and bent a long look on 
the gold-piece now reposing in the dirty palm of 
the double-dealing Pablo, who gloated down at 
its yellow luster as if hypnotized. Then his sly 
glance lifted to Pablo’s fascinated face, and he 
grinned a cunning grin. 

To the white men out on the water, already 
outward bound, he yelled boldly: “Where do 
you go with all those boats?” 


THE POWER OF GOLD 


47 


Rand, lounging against the cabin, spoke his 
first words since leaving the Tigre Yacu. 

“To the devil!” he snapped. 

“A quick voyage to you!” came the jeering 
retort. 

“Faith,” muttered Tim Ryan, “mebbe ye 
spoke a true word, feller, at that.” 


CHAPTER V 

EYES IN THE BUSH 


G RIPPED again by the current of the 
■ Maranon, the long river boat and its 
trio of canoes floated downstream. It 
traveled slowly, however, for McKay had or¬ 
dered the paddlers to rest. Meanwhile a coun¬ 
cil of war proceeded in the cabin. 

“We have to get rid of this garretea and its 
crew,” stated McKay. “May as well drift until 
we figure out how. It won’t take us long to go 
back upstream, and it’s as well to get away from 
San Regis and that snooping trader. Now 
what’ll we do with this cumbersome craft?” 

Frowns of thought ensued. The big boat had 
become a veritable elephant on their hands. It 
was Jose who suggested a solution of the 
problem. 

“Perhaps this may do, capitan. Send boat and 
crew to Iquitos, and with them a note to a man 
I know, telling him to pay off the crew and hold 
the boat for us. I have a friend there—oh 
yes, even an outlaw has friends—who will do 
this if I write the letter. The boat is worth 
as much as the wages of the paddlers, is it not 
so? Then he will lose nothing if we never come 
to get it. 

48 


EYES IN THE BUSH 


49 

“Promise the Indians more pay if they reach 
there by a certain time, and they will travel 
fast enough to keep ahead of that spying 
Maldonado, who surely would question them if 
he overtook them. Still, perhaps he travels 
up, not down. I wish I knew what is in his 
garretea.” 

“I can tell ye that,” volunteered Tim. “I got 
tired standin’ on board, so I rambled over and 
peeked at his cargo. It’s heavy stuff—copper 

kittles and hardware and crockery-” 

“Ah! Esta bien! He goes upstream. If he 
were down bound he would be carrying straw 
hats, sarsaparilla, sugar, and such things, for 
the down-river trade. Then we need not care 
how much time these paddlers take. Only give 
them the letter, explain to the popero, and let 
them go. Is the plan good, capitan?” 

“Why not pay ’em off ourselves?” Rand de¬ 
murred. “We’ve got lots of trade-cloth-” 

“If you pay them they will go straight back 
home as soon as we are out of sight,” Jose in¬ 
terrupted. “Let us make a good start up the 
Tigre Yacu before anyone iSarns of our journey. 

Not that many will dare to follow, but-” 

“Jose has the right idea,” clipped McKay. 
“That looks like a good cove over yonder. May 
as well transfer our stuff there. Popero! Aden- 
tro! Inland, over yonder!” 

The puzzled steersman obediently swung his 
rudder and growled at the paddlers. The flo- 





50 


TIGER RIVER 


tilla veered, plowed into a gap in the bank, 
bumped to a stop against the shore. At once 
began the work of transshipment. 

The paddlers, much mystified, found them¬ 
selves stowing in the two newly acquired canoes 
the sealed kerosene tins—which held not oil but 
reserve rations, cartridges, and such necessities, 
soldered tight to keep out moisture and thievish 
hands—and other paraphernalia of their pa- 
trones. Meanwhile the Peruvian, equipped with 
paper and pencil by Knowlton, laboriously com¬ 
posed a brief note which he signed, not with name 
or initials, but with an undecipherable symbol. 
When it was done he laughed in derision. 

“Look at the miserable scrawl!” he jeered. 
“When I was a little boy in—a certain town be¬ 
yond the mountains—I wrote such a hand that 
the padre used to pat my head. And now— 
caramba! one would think this note was written 
with a machete instead of a pencil. Years of the 
paddle and the gun have destroyed the writing 
trick. I move the whole arm to make one tiny 
letter.” 

“Ain’t it the truth?” sympathized Tim. “Me, 
I never was no hand to write, but till I went to 
France I could git off some kind of a letter to 
me girl without tearin’ me shirt. Then after I 
got used to heavin’ Fritzies around with me 
bay’nit I couldn’t sling a pen at all, at all. I’d 
git cramps. So I jest wrote, ‘Wait till I git 
home, kid, and I’ll tell ye all about it. So no 


EYES IN THE BUSH 


5i 

more from yours truly.’ And I let it go at 
that.” 

“And what did the girl say, amigo?” laughed 
Jose. 

“Aw, she gimme a long-distance bawlin’ out 
and then married a guy that was makin’ a mil¬ 
lion a week in a shipyard. I got me another girl 
toot sweet—one o’ them pretty li’l frogs—and 
saved a lot o’ wear and tear on me wrist, to say 
nothin’ o’ paper and ink. Hey there, ye wall¬ 
eyed Settin’ Bull, where ye puttin’ that bag? 
Over there—por alii—alia—00 la la—aw, talk to 
him, Hozy! I git me French and Spinach mixed 
when I want to talk fast.” 

Jose, chuckling, set the bewildered Indian 
right with three sharp words and a gesture, and 
thereafter aided in speeding up the shifting of 
the equipment. The coppery crew, who knew 
they would not be kicked or struck by the North 
Americans, were taking their time in all they 
did; but when they heard the Spaniard’s crack¬ 
ling oaths and found him looming over them in 
apparent eagerness to decapitate any man who 
dawdled, they jumped. Under the lash of his 
tongue they finished the job in half time. 

Then, after a final inspection of the garretea 
to make sure nothing was forgotten, McKay told 
the men that their ways parted here. Carefully, 
patiently, he explained just what they were to 
do, until it was evident that it was understood. 
The letter he gave to the popero, who took it 


52 


TIGER RIVER 


gingerly and turned it over and over. Then he 
glanced along the huddle of Indian faces, which 
stared glumly back at him as if their owners 
wondered if they were not the victims of some 
white-man treachery. 

“Jose, you’re sure these chaps will be paid in 
full at Iquitos?” he demanded. 

“I am positive, capitan,” the Peruvian an¬ 
swered earnestly. “I know that man as I know 
my right hand, and he will do as I have written. 
He will pay them their just wage and get them 
places on some up-bound boat. They will have 
no trouble in receiving what is due^or in return¬ 
ing home.” 

The captain nodded. In direct, curt, but 
kindly phrases he pledged them his word that no 
trick was being put upon them, and that the 
paper in the hands of the popero would bring 
them the full reward for their toil. The sooner 
they reached Iquitos, he pointed out, the sooner 
they would be paid; they had best not dally on 
the way, and above all they must not lose the 
paper or allow anyone to turn them aside from 
their journey. For a moment they stared back 
at him, searching his face. Then they stirred 
and muttered their belief in his words. 

“We leave with you,” McKay added, smiling 
a little, “to help you on your way, a little aguar¬ 
diente. It is here in the cabin. Adios.” 

The glum faces lit up. Teeth gleamed in joy¬ 
ous grins, and as the captain went over the side 


EYES IN THE BUSH 53 

they scrambled into the cabin to drink his part¬ 
ing gift. 

“Nothing like it to send them away happy,” 
laughed Knowlton, who had suggested the idea 
of leaving the raw liquor. “Poor fellows, they 
get little enough pleasure.” 

And as the three canoes slid out into the river 
they all looked back and tossed their paddles in 
response to the shouts of the sons of the western 
mountains: “Hasta luego, senores! Good-by 
for a while!” 

They were the last cheery words the five were 
to hear, except from one another, for many a 
long day. 

Into the glare of the westering sun surged the 
canoes, driven by the powerful strokes of fresh 
muscles and by the impetus of a new quest. The 
twin dugouts, built for three men each, held two 
pairs: McKay and Knowlton in the one, Rand 
and Tim in the other. Jose, alone in his smaller 
craft, slipped along with the careless ease of a 
tireless machine. Before long, he knew, his four 
mates would become conscious of hot palms and 
fatigued shoulders; for weeks of traveling in the 
confinement of a garretea give men scant chance 
to keep fit. But he said no word. 

San Regis drew near, crept past, and fell away 
behind without sign that the passage of the little 
fleet had been observed. Evidently the popula¬ 
tion of the town was again clustered at the door 
of the great man Arredondo, listening to every 


TIGER RIVER 


54 

word uttered and watching the progress of their 
Moyobamba visitor’s campaign to get possession 
of the American double-eagle. The adventurers, 
remembering the cunning gaze of t*he trader at 
the gold-dazed Pablo, had not the slightest doubt 
that before morning the up-river man would have 
that coin in his greasy pouch. But that was a 
matter for Pablo to worry about. They had 
their canoes—stout boats worth double the price 
paid—and were on their way. 

Soon the one-man canoe drew a little ahead 
and swung inward. It curved athwart the eddy¬ 
ing shore current and glided into the bank, out 
of sight. The others, following close, slowed 
beside it and came to a pause. Once more clear 
water flowed around them. Behind rolled the 
Maranon. Ahead opened the Tigre. 

For a moment, holding their boats steady with 
slow strokes, the five men gazed around. One 
last look they took at the tremendous river 
marching onward in savage power through the 
wilderness—a grim monster which, even though 
it now rested between the periods of its engulfing 
floods, gnawed ceaselessly at its jungle walls and 
from time to time brought miles of tree-laden 
shore tumbling down into its insatiable maw; 
which, already a thousand miles away from its 
birthplace in little Lake Lauricocha, would sweep 
on eastward for three thousand miles farther, 
growing more and more vast, until it hurled its 
yellow tide two hundred miles out into the At- 


EYES IN THE BUSH 


55 


lantic Ocean; a sullen serpent of waters, malig¬ 
nant, merciless, untamable as the colossal moun¬ 
tains whence it sprang. 

Yet the level-eyed voyagers in the hollowed- 
out log boats gave the monster only the casual 
look of men who cared no whit for its power. It 
was the smaller stream that held their searching 
gaze—the frank, clear water which seemed to 
hold no evil thing in its limpid depths, yet which 
lured bold hearts into a dim land of sorcery and 
there swallowed them utterly or flung them back 
scarred, mutilated, and mad; the flowing road 
to mountains of golden treasure, but a road be¬ 
leaguered by ferocious beasts and by man-demons 
who belted themselves with human hair and 
shrunk human heads into leering dolls. 

“Once upon a time,” said blue-eyed Knowlton, 
“when I was a little kid, I used to read fairy 
tales and Arabian Nights yarns about caves 
where dragons would come out and shoot fire 
from their noses and broil wayfarers to death; 
and about ogres who trapped travelers into their 
castles and stewed them for supper, and one- 
eyed giants who picked men up by the feet and 
bit their heads off, and so on. And when I went 
to bed and the room was dark I could see those 
things standing in the black corners and glower¬ 
ing at me. Gee, I used to sweat blood! 

“Then when I grew older I sneered at myself 
for ever believing such things. *But lately I’m 
not so sure that I sneered rightly. There isn’t 


56 TIGER RIVER 

much choice, after all, between a fiery dragon 
and a tiger that tears out your throat, or between 
a fellow who bites off your head and one who cuts 
it off and keeps it so that he can spit in your 
face whenever he feels grouchy.” 

“Getting cold feet?” smiled McKay, who more 
than once had seen the former lieutenant plunge 
recklessly into an inferno of blood and flame 
among the shell-torn trenches of the Hindenburg 
line. 

“Uh-huh. Numb from the knees down. But, 
on the level, I’m beginning to wonder if we’re 
not a lot of jackasses to go in here. Seems as if 
those San Regis bums would have some gold if 
this river of theirs was gold-bearing.” 

Jose spat. 

“Bah! Those sons of sloths? If the ground 
beneath their miserable hovels were full of gold, 
teniente, they would not have enough ambition 
to dig it up. And to go up this stream seeking 
it—not they! They lock themselves into their 
houses at night for fear of the tigres.” 

Rand nodded. 

“Same way over in the Andes,” he said. “In¬ 
dians, poor as dirt, shivering and lousy, living on 
top of millions in gold and silver and never 
digging down to it. Takes a white man to hunt 
treasure. What’s biting you, Tim?” 

Tim, who had been twitching his shoulders as 
if to dislodge something, now lifted a hand and 
scratched. 


EYES IN THE BUSH 


57 


“Nothin’—yet. Mebbe it’s only me imagina¬ 
tion, but I been feelin’ crawly since we left that 
there town. Them folks ain’t human. I bet the 
only time they git a bath is when they git caught 
in the rain. And—talkin’ about dirt, did ye pipe 
the bare-naked kid eatin y it?” 

All shook their heads. But Jose smiled 
understandingly. 

“ ’Tis so. He was clawin’ up hunks o’ clay 
and chewin’ ’em—I seen him swaller the stuff!” 

“That is nothing new,” Jose said calmly. 
“Children who are eaters of dirt are common 
enough in this country west of the Napo, and 
east of it, too. But unless we are to go back to 
San Regis, let us move now and find a place to 
make camp to-night. The sun swings low.” 

“Right ye are. Let’s go. I’ll fight all the 
head-hunters this side o’ Heligoland before I’ll 
go back to that dump.” 

The water swirled behind the paddles and 
creamed away from the prows. Three abreast, 
the canoes surged away up the River of Tigers. 
They passed the spot where the dead ashes of 
the Peruvian’s noonday fire lay hidden in the 
grass, and where the mud still held the broad 
tracks of a cat creature which long before now 
had been torn asunder by down-river crocodiles. 
On they swept, gradually growing smaller, until 
at length they slid out of sight around a turn. 

Then, at the edge of the thick growth above 
the point where they had paused, a man moved. 


TIGER RIVER 


58 

Across his flat, coppery face, expressionless as 
that of a crude idol, passed a flicker of hatred. 
One dirty paw, resting on the hilt of a machete 
dangling down his ragged breeches, tightened 
as if around the throat of a Spaniard. Beady 
eyes glancing warily around him, he began 
silently working his way eastward, down the 
bank of the Maranon. 

He was the Indian whom Jose had knocked 
flat on the shore of the port of San Regis. And 
he was on his way back to the town where waited 
his master, the Sehor Torribio Maldonado, 


CHAPTER VI 

IN THE PATH OF THE STORM 

B ETWEEN two hundred-foot walls of 
I vivid verdure, starred softly by delicately 
tinted orchids and tipped by yellowish bud- 
flowers of palms, the Tigre Yacu shone like pol¬ 
ished silver, unruffled by the faintest breath of 
air. On its placid bosom were mirrored great 
flowering ferns, fifty feet tall; curving stems and 
drooping fronds of the giant of grasses, the 
bamboo; the high-reaching branches of the jagua, 
the enormous plumes of the jupati, the feather- 
bunch crown of the ubussu, the white trunk and 
flat top of the lordly silk-cotton, and the loop¬ 
ing, twining, dangling network of aerial vines. 

Even the emerald gleam of the huge green 
tree-beetles, shining like jewels in the glare of 
the westering sun, was reflected from the flawless 
surface of the river of the evil name. Over it 
wheeled and floated clouds of gorgeous blue and 
yellow butterflies. Across it winged flocks of 
green parrots, and along it hopped and yelped 
huge-beaked toucans gaudy in feather dresses of 
flaring yellow, orange, and red. 

A captivating, alluring river it seemed, beckon¬ 
ing the wanderer on into an Elysium where no 
evil could wait and where stingless bees would 
59 


6o 


TIGER RIVER 


pour their honey into his bowl. But to those 
wanderers who even now were stroking up into 
its luxuriance and furrowing its smooth surface 
into uneasy ripples it was not the Eden it looked. 
Every man of the five was tormented by scores 
of red-hot needles. 

Though their distance from shore might pro¬ 
tect them from savage man or beast, it only made 
them easier prey to the tiny torturers whose 
ferocity has for centuries aided the head-hunting 
barbarians to keep the tributaries of the Mara- 
non almost uninhabited by white men: the blood¬ 
thirsty zancudos, the almost invisible piums, the 
big black montuca flies whose lancets bore so big 
a hole in the flesh that blood drips long after the 
bite. Out on the broad Maranon itself, where 
the east winds swept strong and steady across 
all floating craft, the North Americans had suf¬ 
fered little from such pests. But now, well up 
the Tiger River, they had long since lost that 
wind; and the exposed skin of every man was 
blackened with the minute scars of the piums and 
scabbed with the wounds of the montucas. And, 
with merciless persistence, fresh hordes kept 
swarming to the attack. 

Yet, in days of dogged journeying, they had 
suffered nothing except this constant bloodlet¬ 
ting. Not once had human foes appeared. Not 
once had any animal or snake assailed them— 
though each night the roar of more than one 
tigre had sounded too close to camp for com- 


IN THE PATH OF THE STORM 61 

fortable rest, and from time to time during the 
day as well there came from the maze of shore 
growth the menacing note of some jungle king 
voicing his resentment at the invasion of his 
domain. They received no response to their 
challenge, those fierce animals: for Captain Mc¬ 
Kay had issued strict orders to ignore them. 

“Let them alone unless they attack,” he com¬ 
manded. “We’re here for something more im¬ 
portant than cat shooting, and the less noise we 
make the better. No firing unless necessary.” 

So, except for the volley which had blown the 
head off the big black cat at the Maranon, neither 
the high-powered bolt-action rifles of the Ameri¬ 
cans nor the big-bored repeater of Jose had 
spoken since the five-cornered partnership had 
been formed. Hunting was done at the end of 
each day’s traverse, but only with a light .22- 
caliber table gun, which made little more noise 
than a breaking stick, and with bow and arrow, 
which killed in silence. 

The archer of the company was the taciturn, 
green-eyed Rand. For five years, before being 
found and rehabilitated by the three former sol¬ 
diers who now were his comrades, he had been a 
wild creature of the jungle; and grim necessity 
had made him as expert in the construction and 
use of bow and arrows as any of the savages 
among whom he lived. Moreover, it had given 
him the keen hunting instinct and the instanta¬ 
neous perception of the presence of animal life 


62 


TIGER RIVER 


to which no civilized white man can attain with¬ 
out living long amid primeval surroundings. And 
now, though no longer a “wild dog,” he had not 
lost either his hunting-animal sensitiveness or his 
deadly skill with the weapon of primitive man. 

In fact, his markmanship with the bow was 
much better than with the rifle. Though he had 
equipped himself in the States with the same 
type of rifle and pistol favored by the ex-army 
men, and had made himself thoroughly familiar 
with their use, he still was only a fair shot. In 
comparison with the shooting of his companions, 
his was not even fair. To both McKay and 
Knowlton belonged the little silver medal with 
crossed rifles which the United States Army 
bestows only on its crack shots. Tim, ex-ser¬ 
geant, had won the sharpshooter’s cross—and, 
in his open-handed way, given it to the girl who 
later married the shipyard worker. Jose, veteran 
jungle ranger, was deadly with either rifle or 
machete. In such company Rand was low gun. 

Whether because of a natural dislike to feel¬ 
ing himself inferior to his comrades, or because 
of an atavistic urge to return to the barbaric 
implement of death after returning to the pri¬ 
mordial land east of the Andes, on his way down 
the big river he had quietly built for himself a 
new bow, with a quiver and a goodly supply of 
arrows—five-foot shafts made from straight 
cane and tipped with barbed tail-bones of the 
swamp sting-ray. Equipped with these and minus 


IN THE PATH OF THE STORM 63 

his boots—which, despite the ever-present dan¬ 
ger of snake bite, he refused to wear while hunt¬ 
ing—he now would slip away into the bush late 
each day, silent and deadly as any prowling beast 
of the forest. With him, carrying the little .22 
rifle, went—not Jose, the other bush-trained 
hunter of the party, but Knowlton. While they 
were out Jose and the other two would make 
camp for the night. And before the sun slid 
down behind the distant Andes and night 
whelmed the forest the absent pair always re¬ 
turned with ample meat. 

Jose, who, under normal conditions, should 
have been one of the hunters, remained at the 
river bank from choice; the choice being due to 
the fact that he was not allowed to shoot his own 
heavy gun. On trying to snap the light, short, 
low-power rifle to his shoulder and catch the 
sights quickly he found himself, as he said, “all 
thumbs.” After a few vain efforts to accustom 
himself to it he handed it back with a rueful grin. 

“With a man’s gun, amigos, with that old iron 
bar of mine, I can shoot,” he said. “But with 
this toy rifle—this little boy’s plaything—no. 
And these tiny bullets—por Dios, they feel like 
fleas in my hand! If I shot a monkey with 
one of them I should feel that I had insulted 
him.” 

So it was Knowlton, who had amused himself 
many a time by popping the little gun at croco¬ 
diles’ eyes during the long days of drifting, who 


TIGER RIVER 


64 

followed Rand on the stealthy pot-hunting trips. 
Despite his comparative inexperience at jungle 
travel afoot, he could step quietly and spy game 
quickly, and he could shoot like a flash. With 
Rand as his guide he had no difficulty in getting 
about, and now and then he knocked over some 
bird or small animal in places where his part¬ 
ner’s long bow was at a disadvantage. Thus the 
pair formed a very efficient team. 

Now another day was nearing its end. A 
sweltering day, it had been; a breathless, cloud¬ 
less day on which the vindictive assaults of the 
insect hordes seemed to have been redoubled. 
Ceaselessly they hunted skin spots not already 
hardened and scabbed by the bites of their pred¬ 
ecessors ; they burrowed into beards and shaggy 
hair, they crawled into noses and ears, they 
sneaked inside shirts and strove to dig under the 
sweatbands of the hats. The paddlers, smeared 
with clay which they had applied in the vain hope 
of defending their tortured skins, grinned and 
bore it; grinned not with mirth or contempt, but 
with the fixed facial contraction of acute discom¬ 
fort which must be endured. Tight-mouthed, 
slit-eyed, their faces were masks of unbreakable 
determination. Their shoulders swung with 
regular unbroken sway, and the paddles rose and 
fell as if moved by machines driven by inexorable 
will. Bugs might come and bugs might go, but 
it seemed that the three boats would surge on 
with never a halt to the journey’s end. 


IN THE PATH OF THE STORM 65 

But the eyes under those slits were scanning 
the shores, which now were closer together than 
back at the Maranon, and from time to time the 
heads turned in a brief look at some possible 
camp-site. It was nearing the hour when the 
voyagers must land, hunt, throw up pole-and- 
palm shelters, sling hammocks, eat, and seek 
badly needed refuge from their tormentors in¬ 
side the drab insect bars. And in his stubborn 
heart every man was glad of it. 

With a wordless grunt Jose veered out of line 
toward the left shore. The twin dugouts fol¬ 
lowed. Into a shadowy creek between small 
bluffs they went. Within the entrance thick 
brush flanked them like impenetrable walls. But 
a few rods farther upstream Jose drew up to 
shore and paused. There the tangle was thin¬ 
ner, and the Peruvian pointed to an arm-thick 
sindicaspi tree. 

“Will do,” granted McKay, speaking through 
lips swollen by bites. The pair of San Regis 
dugouts drew up, and their paddlers rose stiffly 
and stepped ashore. 

A moment of wary looking around—then 
Jose slashed his machete with whirling deftness 
through the nearest bush stalks, clearing a small 
space. The travelers pulled from their canoes 
dry clothing and large gourds, and, with such 
speed as their tired muscles allowed, they 
stripped. Insects swooped exultantly at the 
bared skins. But the pests had hardly alighted 


66 


TIGER RIVER 


when they were swept away by the gourdfuls of 
water with which their victims deluged them¬ 
selves from hair to heels. A copious drenching, 
a swift rubdown, a hurried donning of dry gar¬ 
ments, and the five stood reinvigorated. With 
one accord they produced tobacco and papers 
and rolled cigarettes. 

“Got firewood, anyways,” remarked Tim, 
eying the sindicaspi tree and luxuriously blowing 
smoke into the cloud of bugs around him. “Bet¬ 
ter git busy and make camp. Bet ye we have 
another crackin’ thunderstorm soon. We didn’t 
git no shower to-day. Same way our first day 
up—there wasn’t no rain that noon, but we sure 
caught it that night.” 

The others nodded. The regular noon rain, 
usually arriving from the east as punctually as if 
turned on by prearranged schedule, had failed 
to arrive that day. The air now was oppres¬ 
sively heavy, though nowhere near so hot as out 
on the river; in fact, the change in temperature 
was so marked in the damp forest shadows that 
if the travelers had not shed their sweat-soaked 
clothing promptly on landing they would have 
speedily become chilled. 

“The rain must come,” Jose agreed. “The 
path of the sun is the path of the storm, as the 
Indians say. The sun has nearly passed, and 
the storm is not far behind.” 

With which he drew his machete again and 
renewed his destruction of the small growth. 


IN THE PATH OF THE STORM 67 

Tim pulled a half-ax from his canoe and ad¬ 
vanced on the sindicaspi tree—one of the few 
dependable fuel woods in the humid forests of 
the upper Amazon. McKay, with a similar ax, 
looked about for material for the corner-posts 
and ridge-pole of the night refuge. Rand, who 
had remained unshod after his bath, got out 
his big bow, and Knowlton picked up the scorned 
but useful little rifle. Every man was at his job. 

With no word of parting, the pair of hunters 
slipped away into the woods, working upstream. 
Oddly mated they seemed, and incongruously 
armed: the one stolid-faced as an Indian, black- 
bearded, hatless, barefoot, carrying the most 
archaic missile-throwing weapon known; the 
other light of eye and hair, sensitive-mouthed* 
appearing more like a dreamer than a man of 
action, bearing a puny weapon which indeed 
looked to be the boy’s toy Jose had called it. Yet 
they were brothers at heart—brothers of the 
long trails and the lawless lands—and each was 
equipped to fight the most ferocious beast or 
man; for strapped to each right thigh swung a 
heavy automatic, and down each left leg hung a 
keen machete. 

For a short distance they stole along in file, 
eyes searching the branches, feet subconsciously 
picking clear going. All at once Rand stiffened 
and paused, but only for a moment. Then he 
moved on. Up from the creek-side rose a brown 
bird resembling a pheasant, which whirred away 


68 


TIGER RIVER 


aloft and vanished among the dense foliage. 
Knowlton’s rifle, instinctively lifted, sank again. 
Both men had recognized the gamy-looking flier 
as a chansu, whose flesh is so musky that even 
Indians refuse to eat it. 

Onward they crept, threading the pathless 
tangle like somber shadows for perhaps another 
hundred yards. Then the light increased. Just 
ahead the tree-tops thinned, and after a few 
more stealthy steps the hunters halted behind 
trees at the edge of a small lagoon. At once 
each threw up his weapon. A few feet beyond, 
at the edge of the water, were feeding a splendid 
pair of huananas—big ducks, armed with small 
horns on the wings. 

Rand, extending his bow horizontally, loosed 
point-blank. At the low twang of the cord both 
birds jumped and shot out broad wings in the 
first beat of flight. But neither rose. With the 
thrum of the bow blended the snap of the little 
rifle. The extended wings fell asprawl, the 
reaching necks collapsed, and both birds floated 
dead on the water. 

Exultantly the men started forward to re¬ 
trieve their game. In that same moment two 
things happened. A couple of rods farther on, 
a bush swayed. As Rand’s quick eye caught the 
movement, the light suddenly dimmed and be¬ 
hind them sounded a rising roar like the onrush 
of a mighty tidal wave. 

For an instant Rand watched the bush. Then, 


IN THE PATH OF THE STORM 69 

deciding that the movement was caused by some 
animal, he glanced up. Overhead loomed black 
clouds, hurtling westward at terrific speed. Be¬ 
hind, the roar of the onsweeping wind culminated 
in a crash of thunder. Storm was upon them. 

Dropping his rifle, Knowlton plunged thigh- 
deep into the muddy pool and seized the birds. 
Rand swept a searching gaze along the shore, 
seeking shelter—and found it. Just beyond the 
the spot where the bush had wagged stood a 
patriarchal old tree in whose base opened a black 
hole. Shouting, the green-eyed man pointed to 
it, grabbed up the rifle, and ran. Knowlton, 
floundering ashore with a duck dangling by the 
neck from each fist, raced in his wake. 

Another crash—a searing flash of lightning— 
a smashing deluge of rain—then Rand reached 
the hollow tree and plunged into it. In the same 
instant Knowlton heard a startled yell and 
glimpsed something darting out of the hole: a 
thing that seemed only a thin, vanishing streak 
elbow high from the ground. In mid-stride he 
dropped both ducks and snatched his pistol from 
the holster. Then he hurled himself into the 
dim tree-trunk. 

Struggling bodies plunged against him and 
spun him outside again. A sheet of rain lashed 
into his face, blinding and choking him. Light¬ 
ning flared anew, casting a ghastly greenish glare 
through the sudden darkness. By its weird 
flicker he saw two fighting men reel about in the 


70 TIGER RIVER 

blur of falling water, then pitch headlong back 
into the hole. 

Into that hole he leaped again. The light of 
storm winked out. . Dimly he made out a man 
tangle at his feet. As he strove to see which 
was his partner they heaved over violently, 
knocking his legs from under him. His pistol 
flew from his hand. Falling, he grabbed fiercely 
at the man on top. 

Then, before he knew whom he had seized, 
above them sounded a straining, creaking groan 
of wood. The ground rose under them. A 
rending crack—a rushing sound— a tremendous 
blow. Then darkness and silence. 


CHAPTER VII 

THE CLAWS OF THE TIGRE 

N IGHT engulfed the jungle in such black¬ 
ness as only the jungle knows. 

The vast sea of tree and bush and vine, 
by day almost impenetrable but nevertheless 
composed of myriads of separate parts, now was 
a solid bulk. Far above it the tropic stars shone 
in a clear sky of deep dark blue, dropping a faint 
light which, to such creatures as moved above 
the matted roof of branch and leaf, gave form 
and substance to those things near at hand. But 
down below, where shadows lay thick even at 
noonday, the gloom now was that of an abyss. 
Through it could pass only such life as could 
dilate its eyes to the rims, the noisome things 
which have no eyes and need none, or that un¬ 
beatable creature—man—who can carry light 
with him. 

Yet, among those Stygian shades, life moved. 
Misshapen ant-bears stalked slowly about, their 
gluey tongues drooling out, in search of ant-hills. 
Giant cats, hungry and savage, hunted in ugly 
impatience. And down beside a little pool on a 
creek of the Tigre Yacu, a man struggled dizzily 
to sit up. 

His first conscious impression was that a tigrg 


72 


TIGER RIVER 


had snarled. He could not see that beast, but 
some primitive instinct, inherited perhaps from 
apelike ancestors on whom the terrible saber- 
toothed tiger had preyed ages ago, told him it 
was only a few feet away, at his right. Moved 
by the primordial impulse associated with that 
ancient instinct, he reached above him for a 
branch to seize as his first move toward safety 
in the upper air. His hand hit solid wood. At 
the same instant the invisible brute snarled again. 

His head whirled, and he slumped down. For 
a moment he lay supine, trying to think. He had 
been fighting—storm had flashed and crashed— 
something had struck him- 

Abruptly the menace of the present knocked 
all thought of the past from his struggling brain. 
Hot, fetid breath poured against his bare right 
leg. A sniffing sound came to his ears. He 
yanked the leg back, and just in time; for great 
claws hooked into his breeches, scraping the 
skin. 

Heaving himself over, he felt the cloth yield 
and heard it rip. Then he caught the malevolent 
gleam of a big eye. 

Tardily, something told him he was armed. 
His right hand slid to his thigh, yanked a flat 
pistol from a holster—and at the same instant 
t the huge paw reached for him again. 

The claws sank with a cruel grip into his 
flesh. Again glimmered the eye. He shoved his 
weapon forward and fired. 



THE CLAWS OF THE TIGRE 73 

Crash-crash-crash-crash! Four shots shat¬ 
tered the night. 

The claws bit deeper in a convulsive spasm. 
Squirming with pain, he struck at them with his 
pistol. The barrel hit something hard, unyield¬ 
ing, and the weapon was nearly knocked from 
his grip. With an inarticulate growl he dropped 
it and attacked the clutching paw with both 
hands. 

Though it clung to its hold, that paw now 
was motionless. He tore its hooks loose and 
threw it asi 3 e. Then he scratched around 
him in a mad effort to recover* his gun. One 
hand hit it and closed around it. At once he 
lurched up. 

A cruel blow on the head downed him. He 
struck on something softer than earth, slid down 
it a little, dropped a hand on it. His dazed 
brain told him it was warm human flesh. 

Another snarl beyond him! Then a hoarse, 
harsh roar of rage. Would that tigre never die ? 
It sounded more malignant, more powerful than 
ever. Pistol shoved forward, hair bristling, he 
settled himself forward on his knees and awaited 
attack. He could not see the thing; he must 
hold his fire until- 

“It was here, amigos. I cannot have it 

wrong- Hah! What is that? Sangre de 

Cristo! The tigre himself!” 

The voice struck across the black void with 
startling suddenness. With it came light. With 




74 


TIGER RIVER 


both voice and light came a louder snarl from 
the unseen beast. 

“Yeah! That’s him. Let him have it!” 

Rifle reports split the air before the second 
voice ceased: sharp cracks merging with a blunter 
shock of exploding gunpowder; two high-velocity- 
guns and an old-fashioned .44 pouring out a 
ragged volley. Silence followed. 

After a tense pause the first voice spoke. 

“Dead, I think. But it is best to be sure.” 

The black powder smashed out for a second 
time. Another pause ensued. 

“Si. Dead, comrades. And now if we can 

find the one whose gun we heard- Senores! 

Knowlton! Rand!” 

“Hey, Dave! Looey! For the love o’ Mike 
make a noise!” 

The crouching man, who still could not see 
his rescuers, shouted hoarsely. 

“Llere! Come closer! This is Dave!” 

Sounds of movement began. The light in¬ 
creased. Rand, peering about, found himself 
walled in. The light shone beyond a jagged hole 
near him, a scant foot wide. 

“Gee, I dunno yet where he’s at,” came Tim’s 

puzzled tones. “Sounded right yonder- 

Huh! Lookit the tree down! He must be under 
that. Hey, Dave, old feller! Are ye all right? 
Where’s looey? That bloody tiger didn’t git 
him, did he? Gee, lookit this—another tiger! 
Under the tree here, dead as a herrin’!” 




THE CLAWS OF THE TIGRE 


75 

The torchlight shone brightly now beyond the 
hole. Rand spoke again. 

“In here, fellows. Penned up in a little coop. 
Can’t stand up or get out. Merry must be here, 
too—I’m sort of woozy yet. Got knocked cold a 
while ago. Pass in a light.” 

“Bet yer life, ol’-timer! We’ll git ye loose in 
no time. Jest a minute, till we yank this cat o«t 
o’ here.” 

Another hole opened, lower down, as the 
dead paw Was pulled out from the opening 
through which it had reached the imprisoned 
man. Then into the upper hole came a torch 
and a fist. 

“Here y’are, Davey. Ye ain’t busted up, are 
ye? Good! Then lookit looey, if he’s there 
with ye. How’s he?” 

Rand snatched the torch, turned on his knees, 
and looked down. Just beyond him lay the 
former lieutenant. His blond hair was blond no 
more, but a dull red. From under him protruded 
the naked legs and lower torso of another man 
whose head and shoulders seemed to be hidden 
beyond Knowlton’s body. Both were motionless. 

Starting up to lift his comrade, Rand struck 
his head once more against the solid obstacle 
above. The blow dropped him back to his knees. 
Pressing one hand to his sore scalp, he took his 
first look about his prison, seeking a way out. 

He had spoken more truly than he knew when 
he said he was penned in a coop. Around him 


76 TIGER RIVER 

rose the encompassing shell of the big old tree, 
now uprooted and thrown back prone. Over 
him was the broken butt, and beyond him were 
great fang splinters driven into the torn earth. 
The tree, strained too far by the storm wind, 
had broken acr.oss its hollow base, collapsed on 
itself, ripped its own stump loose and shoved it 
back, then folded and closed like the broken 
halves of an enormous oyster shell. Within the 
cavity the three men w'ere imprisoned. 

All this he saw in one slow sweep of the eyes. 
Then he hunched forward and pulled at Knowl- 
ton, who seemed wedged among gigantic slivers. 
He could not move him. But he could, and did, 
determine that he was alive and, though sense¬ 
less and bleeding from a split scalp, not fatally 
hurt. 

The smoke of the torch choked him. Hastily 
he pivoted about and pushed it out through the 
hole. 

“Merry’s pinned down,” he told the anxious 
men outside. “Got a cut head, and knocked out, 
but seems all right otherwise. Got an ax or 
something? Maybe I can cut him loose.” 

“Got both axes,” Tim informed him, shoving 
one through. “We been lookin’ all over the lot 
for ye, and we come prepared for anything. 
Here’s the li’l electric flash, too. We’ll cut this 
hole bigger while ye git looey clear. How’d ye 
ever git in this trap, anyways?” 

Rand wasted no time in explanation just then. 


THE CLAWS OF THE TIGRE 77 

Adjusting the little slide to make the light burn 
steadily, he wedged the electric torch in a crack 
and commenced the difficult task of cutting 
Knowlton free. So scant was his headroom that 
he had to hold the short-handled ax by the back 
of the blade and make mere pecks at the long 
wood fangs. But the edge was keen, and after 
steady, careful work he managed to liberate his 
companion. 

By that time the hole behind him had been 
enlarged enough to give easy ingress or exit. As 
he passed back the ax, McKay ordered him to 
come out. But he turned back to Knowlton. 
Forthwith iron hands gripped his feet, and he 
was hauled backward out into the air. 

“I said to come out,” clipped McKay. 
“You’re done up. I’ll get Merry.” 

And, shoving aside both Tim and Jose, the 
captain crawled into the cavity. Rand, feel¬ 
ing suddenly weak, sprawled where he had been 
left. 

“Humph! Who’s this fellow?” came Mc¬ 
Kay’s muffled voice fro/n the hole. 

Rand made no answer, and the captain did not 
spend time in examining the man he had found 
under Knowlton. He emerged feet first, drag¬ 
ging the limp form of the lieutenant. 

“Glory be!” blurted Tim after a close look 
and a hurried examination. “He’s all here. 
Scratched up some and leakin’ on top, but only 
asleep. Attaboy, Hozy! Dump it on his head.” 


78 


TIGER RIVER 


Jose, who had brought a hatful of water, 
dumped it as requested. McKay, after a search¬ 
ing glance, nodded and turned back to the hole. 
Rand rolled over, crept on hands and knees to 
Knowlton’s side, and saw the blue eyes flicker 
open and stare upward. Tim reached to his 
hip, produced a flask, uncorked it and held it to 
the blond-bearded mouth. The lieutenant 
promptly swallowed a mouthful of anisado, 
coughed, grinned, and struggled up. 

“Not so fast, looey,” chuckled Tim. “Ye’re 
showin’ too much speed for yer own good—I 
was goin’ to feed ye another shot o’ this. If ye 
want it, take it quick, or ye won’t git it.” 

“Not now,” mumbled the blond man. “Gee, 
my head aches! Hello, Dave. What’s all the 
row?” 

“Row’s all over, Merry. Cap is bringing out 
the chap we found in the tree. Tree busted and 
fell on us while we were waltzing around in 
there. Guess the other fellow got busted, too.” 

“He did,” McKay’s voice corroborated. 
“Who was he?” 

Tim and Jose, who until now had known noth¬ 
ing of any other prisoner of the tree, voiced their 
amazement as they saw what the captain had 
hauled forth. Rand and Knowlton, too, got to 
their feet and stared downward. In the waver¬ 
ing torchlight the five men stood in silent con¬ 
templation of the sixth. 

He was a muscular man of medium stature, 


THE CLAWS OF THE TIGRE 79 

black-haired, strong-faced, light-skinned, naked 
except for a loin-clout of dark red cloth and a 
necklace of tiger claws: a man whose solid frame 
indicated a strength that would make him an ugly 
antagonist in hand-to-hand combat. But he 
never would fight again. His head lay slanting 
to one side, and his throat was torn open. 

“Big splinter killed him,” McKay explained. 
“It’s in the tree there. I had to pull him off it.” 

“Find his bow there, too?” queried Rand. 

“Didn’t notice it. Found a couple of arrows, 
though, and the little twenty-two gun. Found a 
side-arm, too. Yours, Merry?” 

He extended a service pistol. Knowlton, after 
touching his fingers to his empty holster, took it 
with a nod of thanks. 

“Well, the bow must be there, unless it got 
knocked outside,” Rand asserted. “He was 
there when I dived in out of the storm. Knew 
we were coming, too, and didn’t care for our < 
company. Had his arrow drawn, and let go 
as soon as I popped in. Guess he shot a shade 
too soon—arrow zipped past my chest and 
missed. I jumped him. Merry pranced in and 
fell all over us. Then the world came to an 
end.” 

The others nodded. Jose sank on one knee and 
studied the dead man. 

“An Indian, amigos, though light of skin,” 
was his judgment. “A Jivero, perhaps; but I 
think he is a Yameo—one of the white Indians. 


So 


TIGER RIVER 


This is Yameo country. A lone hunter. But 
his people cannot be far off.” 

Heads lifted and eyes searched the gloom. 
To all except Knowlton, who had been uncon¬ 
scious at the time, came realization that the rule 
against loud gunfire had been broken, and that 
those reports might have reached hostile ears. 
But there was little chance that any searching 
party would seek the gunmen before dawn, and 
dawn was fully eight hours away. 

“We can stow him away out of sight,” said 
McKay, jerking his head toward the tree. “But 
first, what about that leg of yours, Dave ? Looks 
bad. Jam it?” 

“No. Cat tried to haul me out where he could 
get me.” And Rand briefly related his experi¬ 
ence in the tree. 

“Holy jumpin’ Jehoshaphat!” rumbled Tim. 
“Ye sure had a reg’lar time of it, feller! Luck’s 
with ye, I’ll say. Ye had about one chance in a 
million o’ livin’ through that tree smash, and if 
ye hadn’t woke up when ye did and had yer gat 
handy—oof! Better wash yer leg right now, 
before ye git blood poison.” 

“Right,” McKay seconded. “Both of you fel¬ 
lows clean up before we start back to camp. 
Jose, help Dave. Tim, give Merry a head-wash. 
I’ll attend to this chap.” 

Stooping, he gripped the dead man and 
dragged him back to the tree. There he shoved 
him into the cavity where he had died. Glancing 


THE CLAWS OF THE TIGRE 81 

around, he saw the dead tigre which had at¬ 
tacked Rand. With a grim smile he lifted it and 
laid it against the opening. 

“Hm. Female,” he mused. “Leave it to the 
female to claw a man when he’s out of luck.” 

Turning, he stepped aside a few feet and 
found the other brute, a powerful male. This 
also he carried to the hole and dropped beside 
its mate. Picking up Knowlton’s little rifle and 
Rand’s quiver of arrows—the bow was broken 
and useless—he returned to the water, finding 
the two hunters bathed and being temporarily- 
bandaged with handkerchiefs. 

“Did you babes in the woods get any game 
to pay us for our work?” he demanded. 

“Couple of huananas. Beauties, too,” Knowl- 
ton replied. “Ought to be right over back of 
you somewhere. I dropped them.” 

“And the cats ate them,” Jose added. “I 
saw feathers scattered around in the bush 
there.” 

“A swell pair o’ hunters ye are,” chaffed Tim. 
“Kill a couple o’ bananas—I mean huananas— 
and then let the cats git ’em. Next time ye can 
stay to home and let somebody hunt that can 
bring in the bacon. Come on, le’s git back to 
camp and open a can or somethin’. We been 
thrashin’ round lookin’ for you guys when we’d 
oughter been eatin’. Hep, hep—left oblique to 
the guardhouse, march!” 

The torches moved. In squad column the 


•82 


TIGER RIVER 


little band filed slowly away into the gloom. The 
lights faded out, and the jungle night again 
brooded over the little spot where the gun-bear¬ 
ing intruders had violated its solitude. 

On the black bosom of the placid little lagoon 
the big stars shone, mirrored upward in a frame 
of reflected tree tops. On the trampled shore, 
where the sunlight would reveal them to the first 
Indian eyes to scan the mud, were the imprints 
of white men’s boots. Those leather-heeled 
tracks converged at the cavity in the shattered 
butt of the prone tree. And there, in a crude 
tomb bearing the fresh marks of white men’s 
axes, a savage son of the jungle who had died 
fighting white men lay waiting, guarded by two 
bullet-torn tigres of the Tigre Yacu. 


CHAPTER VIII 

THE WHITE INDIANS 


D awn broke. 

Up in the tree-tops birds and mam¬ 
mals started from sleep and hurled a dis¬ 
cordant chorus of squawks, squeaks, hoots and 
howls out into the gray blanket of night-formed 
fog. Down beside a little creek men stirred, 
peered at their insect bars, yawned, stretched, 
and sat up in their hammocks. From one of 
them sounded a muffled grunt of pain, instantly 
subdued. 

“How’s the leg, Dave?” asked Knowlton, 
protruding a white-swathed head. 

“Little sore,” admitted Rand, inwardly curs¬ 
ing himself for that groan. “Nothing to speak 
of. . How’s the head?” 

“Head?” with elaborate carelessness. “For¬ 
got I had one.” 

“Ye’re a couple o’ cheerful liars, the pair o’ 
ye,” rumbled Tim. “Dave, ye’d oughter be on 
crutches; and looey, yer neck’s three inches 
shorter’n ’twas yesterday mornin’, not sayin’ 
nothin’ about a bump on yer bean as big as me 
fist and gosh knows how many stitches in yer 
scalp. Lay down again like good dogs.” 

Knowlton scowled with official severity, for- 


TIGER RIVER 


84 

getful of the fact that the frown was hidden 
under his bandages. 

“Sergeant Ryan, you’re reduced to the ranks 

and fined one drink of hooch for insolence-” 

he began. 

“Sssst! Hush, teniente!” Jose cut in. 

His hawk face was shoved forward. His 
thunderous gun had slid into his hand. All froze 
into postures of listening. Except for the animal 
noises, no sound came to them save the mo¬ 
notonous drip of moisture in the dank jungle 
round about. 

“Something moved yonder,” the Peruvian 
muttered, twitching his head. “An animal 
sneaking past, perhaps. It is too early for In¬ 
dians to be moving. But not too early for us to 
move.” 

With which he arose, rolled his hammock, and 
pitched it into his canoe. The others, with wary 
glances at the murky shadows, followed his ex¬ 
ample. In less than a minute the little palm hut 
was bare. 

But none embarked. Men must eat, and Tim 
voiced the general sentiment when he growled: 
“By cripes, I’m goin’ to have me coffee be¬ 
fore I hit the river, and have it hot. Any war- 
whoops that want to mix it with me before I 
git ready to go can come a-runnin’, poison 
arrers and all.” 

So, with ears alert but with no haste, the five 
made their morning meal by the aid of the faith- 



THE WHITE INDIANS 


85 

ful sindicaspi wood, which burned smokily in the 
heavy air but did its duty. When the frugal 
meal was finished all hands rolled the usual cigar¬ 
ettes and squatted beside the coals until the butts 
scorched their hardened fingers. But there was 
no more banter, and each man’s gun stood within 
elbow-length of him. 

Then, when remaining longer would have been 
mere bravado, they moved into the canoes and 
pushed away. Rand limped while getting aboard, 
and in his dugout he sat on some supplies, his 
torn leg eased out in front of him. Knowlton 
gave no sign of feeling less energetic than usual. 
In silence the small flotilla slipped away toward 
the misty river. 

Once more on the wider water, they found the 
fog still too thick for any but slow travel. It 
was thinning, and patches of it wavered and 
almost dissolved, giving short views of one or 
the other of the banks; but the great body of it 
clung stubbornly to the ground. Stroking lazily, 
they progressed gradually upstream, awaiting 
the dissolution of the murk. Tim found time 
and inclination for a little grumbling. 

‘‘Pretty slow so far,” he declared. “Ain’t 
nothin’ happened but shootin’ three cats and 
gittin’ looey and Dave out of the hole. Where’s 
all them head-hunters and the thing that bites off 
fellers’ toes and makes ’em batty? Where’s the 
bags o’ gold? All we git out o’ this here, now, 
Tiger River is bug bites, seems like.” 


86 


TIGER RIVER 


“Well, you’re getting plenty of them, aren’t 
you?” countered Knowlton. “One thing at a 
time. Trouble with you is that you’re sore be¬ 
cause you missed getting into that tree racket 
of ours.” 

“Oh, yeah. And ye’re so sore ye can’t see 
straight because ye did git into it. All the same, 
I would like to git a li’l action out o’ this trip. I 
wasn’t never brought up to push a paddle for 
nothin’. When do we git to the gold?” 

“Wouldn’t be a bad idea to pan a little dirt 
before long and see what we get,” suggested 
Rand. “Water’s pretty shallow now, and we’re 
well up.” 

McKay nodded. 

“Been thinking of that,” he conceded. “Might 
give us some idea of what’s ahead.” 

Jose, the real source of the expedition, said 
nothing, though he heard all. His eyes kept 
plumbing the slowly clearing shores. Gradually 
his strokes lengthened as the mist rolled upward, 
and the others automatically adapted their pace 
to his. At length the fog burned away com¬ 
pletely, and the canoes swung into their regular 
speed. 

For several hours they forged on, silent as 
usual, hot as usual, bitten as usual by the insect 
swarms. Along the banks little life showed: 
macaws, quarrelsome toucans, surly male coto- 
monos which howled monkey execrations at the 
intruders while the females scurried away 


THE WHITE INDIANS 


87 

through the branches, carrying their young cling¬ 
ing on their backs. Then on the quiet surface 
appeared bubbles, floating down from ahead; and 
to the ears of the canoemen came a soft, elusive 
sound like wind among high leaves. 

“Ah! We approach a mal-paso—a rapid,” 
Jose announced. “Do you not hear the water, 
amigos? It now is low and quiet; but soon we 
shall reach rocks.” 

The mechanical swing of the paddles 
quickened a bit. Rocks! For many long days 
the voyagers from the Andes had seen not the 
tiniest stone: nothing but clay banks and the 
everlasting walls of tree and bush. Now the ar¬ 
rival at rock country meant harder work and 
slower progress, but it also meant that the mys¬ 
terious Cordillera del Pastassa, offshoot of the 
precious Llanganati, was creeping nearer to 
them. And up there to the northwest might 
be—what? The dream city of El Dorado? 
The fabulous mother lode of all gold? Who 
knew? Save for one man whose brain was 
twisted, none had ever come back to tell. 

Peering over-side for the first time in hours, 
McKay saw gravel on the bottom. His iron 
face lightened a little, and he put another pound 
of power on his paddle. 

But when the rocks appeared the eager faces 
of the North Americans fell. Accustomed to the 
fierce mal-pasos and the gorged pongos of th,e 
upper Maranon, they had unconsciously looked 


88 TIGER RIVER 

for a chasm, even though small. The obstacles 
now before them could hardly be dignified by 
the name of “bad pass.” They were only a few 
bowlders at a bend, protruding above the sur¬ 
face like dingy, worn-down molars, visible only 
because of the low stage of the water. Yet they 
were rocks, real rocks, the farthest outposts of 
the host of mountain fragments waiting beyond. 
And, despite their insignificance, the treasure 
hunters smiled at them and at the sleepily mur¬ 
muring water flowing down between them. 

“Here’s where you can exercise your manly 
right arm, Tim, and pan some gold,” Knowlton 
chaffed. “Just hop over with a shovel and dig 
down to bed rock. We’ll get lunch.” 

“Huh! I’d dig halfway to China before I’d 
hit bed rock in this here mud country. But I’ll 
pan her once anyways, jest to see what’s the 
color.” 

And, when the canoes had been forced beyond 
the barrier, he did. With a dexterity betokening 
much practice somewhere farther west, he 
swirled the water and the mingled mud and 
gravel in his pan until he was down to the dregs. 

“Begorry, it’s here!” he exploded. “Nothin’ 
much—jest a few flakes—but it’s color! Free 
gold, gents! Lookit here!” 

Eager heads clustered over his pan. For a 
moment there was silence. 

“Uh-huh,” commented McKay. “Pretty poor 
showing, though.” 


THE WHITE INDIANS 89 

“True for ye, cap. But mebbe further up 
we’ll hit the real stuff. This here bed is all 
gummed up with mud. I’ll give her another 
whirl, jest for luck.” 

His luck seemed not to improve, however, 
though he scooped up several more pans from 
below and worked them with extreme care. His 
first enthusiasm oozed away. After giving the 
last pan a couple of tilts and a sour survey he 
desisted without trying to wash it. 

“Yeah, she’s got to come acrost better’n this 
or I won’t never tell nobody she’s a friend o’ 
mine,” he asserted, clawing out some muddy 
gravel. “If only these dirty li’l stones was some¬ 
thin’ besides dirt-” 

He stopped, his mouth open. His red lashes 
lifted, and his eyes seemed to bulge. Very care¬ 
fully he set the pan down on the nearest rock. 
With the fingers of his free hand he rubbed the 
“dirty li’l stones” in his cupped palm against one 
another. Then he picked one out and grated it 
along the bowlder beside him. 

“Ho-lee jum-pin’ Jee-hosh-” he began. 

Then, mute, he held up the stone. From its 
scraped side flashed a yellow gleam. 

“Nugget!” barked Knowlton. 

With sudden energy Tim scraped his find 
again, then scrubbed it under water with a hard 
thumb. When he again held it aloft it shone 
like a gilt ball. 

“Sure as God made the kaiser crazy, ’tis a 




90 


TIGER RIVER 


nuggit!” he exulted. “Mud stuck to it and 
camouflaged it. Weighs a couple ounces, easy. 
Forty dollars, gents—eight bucks apiece for you 
guys that ain’t panned nothin’ but me. Now le’s 
see ye do a lick o’ work for yerselves. Come 
on in, the water’s fine. Beat ol’ Timmy Ryan 
if ye can! Oh you li’l yeller baby!” 

His exuberant challenge met with instant re¬ 
sponse. Into the river splashed his companions, 
heedless of hunger and of recent injuries from 
tiger claw and falling tree. They brought up 
fistfuls of gravel which had lodged around the 
bowlders, and with minute care inspected each 
one. Tim, carefully buttoning his nugget in a 
pocket after assuring himself that the pocket 
had no hole in it, fell to scraping and rubbing 
each of the little stones which had suddenly be¬ 
come potential treasures. 

One by one, however, he cast them away. The 
whole pan received a rigid inspection, but no 
glimmer of yellow showed. He brought up 
another panful from the same spot where he 
had caught the nugget. This, too, yielded no 
results. 

At length the dripping company ceased work, 
empty-handed. 

“Guess you’re the only lucky one in the crowd, 
Tim,” admitted Knowlton. “Let’s see that nug¬ 
get again.” 

Tenderly Tim drew it out and handed it over. 

“Don’t drop it, for the love o’ Mike,” he 


THE WHITE INDIANS 


9i 


adjured. “If she once gits back in the muck 
she’s gone. Water’s all riled up.” 

With a nod, the lieutenant studied the chunk 
of metal. Then he passed it to McKay. 

“No wonder we didn’t find any more,” he said. 
“That nugget never rolled down this stream.” 

“Huh ? Oh, I s’pose it rained down last night, 
then, or mebbe it fell off one o’ these here trees,” 
jeered the red man. 

“It never came down in the water,” insisted the 
other. “It’s too rough. Water would wear it 
smooth. Look at the stones around here—even 
these big ones are smoothed off. Not a sharp 
edge on any of them.” 

“Right,” agreed McKay. “It’s well rounded, 
but not smooth. You can feel the edges, and 
see them, too.” 

“Um. Begorry, ye’re right, cap. But how’d 
she git here—one lonesome nuggit like that? 
’Taint right.” 

All stared at it, groping for a solution. Pres¬ 
ently Knowlton laughed: “Old Dame Fortune 
left it here for us, maybe, to encourage us. Sort 
of a come-on stunt, eh? Like a girl dropping 
her handkerchief on the sidewalk when you look 
good to her. She’s a flirty old dame, is Lady 
Fortune.” 

“Si,” grinned Jose. “But you are forgetting 
Rafael Pardo, comrades. It may have been he, 
not the old lady, who dropped this here. It is 
less than a month since he returned to Iquitos, 


92 


TIGER RIVER 


as I have told you, with his bag of gold. Is it 
not quite likely that he lost this, and other nug¬ 
gets as well, on his outward trail?” 

“Guess you’ve hit the only sensible answer,” 
agreed Rand. “Come on, let’s eat.” 

The close-drawn knot of men drew apart and 
turned toward shore. With a sudden gulp Tim 
halted short. His mates froze. 

Armed Indians confronted them. 

There on the bank, arrows drawn back and 
aimed with deadly accuracy at each man’s breast, 
stood a dozen hard-faced savages. Their skins 
were light, their hair black and cut straight 
across the brow, their bodies naked save for 
tooth-and-claw necklaces and red loin cloths. In 
stature, in build, and in expression they might 
have been brothers of the dead man left last 
night in the tree-butt tomb beside the black 
lagoon. 

Motionless from surprise for an instant, the 
men in the water then began reaching stealthily 
toward their wet pistols. 

“Alto!” snapped a sharp voice behind them. 
“Lift those hands or you die!” 

The five heads jerked around. On the other 
bank they beheld eight more of the white In¬ 
dians. These held no bows. Instead, seven of 
them squinted down the barrels of big-bored 
rifles. The eighth, standing a little to the rear, 
had a similar rifle but was not aiming it. His 
face had a markedly Spanish cast. 


THE WHITE INDIANS 93 

The hands of the North Americans poised 
exactly where they were. The situation was 
utterly hopeless. But Captain McKay’s voice, 
when he replied, was as cold and calm as if he 
held the power. 

“If we do not die here we die hereafter. 
When and how?” 

Across the mouth of the Spanish Indian 
twitched a fleeting smile. 

“You are cool. Die now if you will. All 
men die. If you do not die here you may live 
long. Strong men live.” 

“Live through what? Torture?” 

“No torture. We kill swiftly. Among us a 
man is all alive or all dead.” 

McKay glanced once at the bowmen, running 
his keen gaze along their hard eyes. He looked 
back at the seven riflemen and the Spanish-speak¬ 
ing leader. 

“No good, boys,” he said quietly. “We 
haven’t a chance. Better surrender.” 

His hands rose. Reluctantly his companions 
followed his example. Turning about, the cap¬ 
tain waded across to the shore where the leader 
stood. In his wake swashed the others, still 
covered from both banks. Up on the land they 
went, and there they halted. 

“We live on,” said McKay, smiling bleakly. 
“Now what?” 

The leader grunted something. The riflemen 
closed in. Five put their gun muzzles against 


94 


TIGER RIVER 


the abdomens of their captives. The other two 
passed behind the white men. 

“Now you will put the hands down. Behind 
your backs.” 

As the order was obeyed the two spare rifle¬ 
men lashed the wrists of each prisoner tightly 
with fiber cord. In less than two minutes ail 
were securely bound. Their weapons were left 
in their sheaths. 

“Now what?” demanded McKay again. 

The evanescent smile fled once more across the 
Spanish face. 

“Now we walk. One of you shall die. The 
others—quien sabe?” 


CHAPTER IX 

A LIFE FOR A LIFE 

G LOOMILY the pinioned men stood on 
- the bank and watched their captors 
gather around the canoes. Despite the 
firmness of their bonds—every one of which had 
been sharply inspected by the leader of the gang 
—they still were guarded by two riflemen, one of 
whom stood at each end of the line, ready to 
shoot any prisoner making a sudden move. The 
other gun-bearers had waded across the river. 

Now, under direction of the leader, half a 
dozen of the wild men busied themselves in thor¬ 
oughly washing every piece of the white men’s 
equipment. The rifles, the axes, the clothing, 
the bags and heavy tins, the cooking and mining 
utensils—everything was plunged into the river, 
swashed about and scrubbed by rough fingers, 
then thrown upward on the shore. Watching the 
immersion of the guns and the puzzled examina¬ 
tion given the bolt actions afterward, the cap¬ 
tives silently raged over their carelessness in 
leaving their rifles while they clawed in the mud 
for gold. The wrath of Jose was not quite 
silent. 

“Sangre de Cristo!” he hissed in an under¬ 
tone. “Caught like the fools we are! Snared 
95 


TIGER RIVER 


96 

by sneaking snakes of Indios while we snatched 
at stones! I, Jose Martinez, trapped like a 
child! Si, wash those guns, you measles-fearing 
man-killers! I hope you catch a hundred 
sicknesses!” 

Forgotten was his recent statement that he 
would rather fall prey to savages than to his 
own countrymen; forgotten the fact that these 
wild men had spared his life, at least for the 
time. His pride in his ability to protect himself 
was cut to the quick, and in the same hissing 
monotone he heaped vitriolic maledictions on 
his captors. 

The two guards stirred, scowling at him and 
moving their gun muzzles into line with his 
stomach. 

“Let up, Jose,” muttered Knowlton. “We all 
feel the same way, but mum’s the word. Less 
talk and more thinking may pull us out of the 
hole yet.” 

The outlaw’s teeth clicked, and he said no 
more, though his eyes still smouldered. Then 
came a call from the Spanish-speaking leader. 

“What is here?” 

He pointed downward at one of the sealed 
tins. Baffled by the heavy solder, none of his 
men had been able to open them. 

“Open it if you dare,” snarled Jose. “Those 
boxes are full of diseases which kill quicker than 
the bite of a snake.” 

The effect of the retort was remarkable. 


A LIFE FOR A LIFE 


97 

Every man of the Indians jumped back from 
those harmless tins as if they truly were filled 
with sudden death. Several, who had handled 
the containers, leaped into the river and fran¬ 
tically scrubbed their hands. 

The outlaw broke into a jeering laugh. Mad¬ 
dened, the leader of the tribesmen plunged in 
and came straight for him, the rest following 
close. Their glittering eyes and hard mouths 
spoke death to the captives. 

“Halt!” snapped McKay. “Do you kill a 
man for warning you ? He has done you great 
service. The diseases cannot harm you unless 
you let them out. Now that he has told you, 
you will not let them out.” 

His quick wit saved his party. The Indians, 
though set to kill, glanced at their leader. That 
leader stared into McKay’s inscrutable face. 

“You have promised that only one shall die,” 
added McKay. “Is your tongue forked?” 

The other’s gaze swerved to his own men and 
came back. 

“My tongue is straight,” he declared. “What 
I have said shall be.” 

He gave a sign to his men. Their weapons 
sank. He spoke, with a backward jerk of the 
head. They turned slowly, went back into the 
water, and began bringing across the equipment 
—all except the tins, which they avoided. 

“You are a good leader,” McKay compli¬ 
mented. “Your men obey.” 


98 


TIGER RIVER 


A touch of cruel pride flitted over the other’s 
face. 

“They know it is best to obey,” was the sig¬ 
nificant retort. With which he turned his back 
to the prisoners and watched the transportation 
of the loot. 

The Scot’s compliment had been no idle flat¬ 
tery. The sinewy white Indian was a good 
commander. He handled his followers almost 
as if he were an American or a European, in¬ 
stead of a savage son of the jungle; and, despite 
their position, the ex-soldiers watched with ap¬ 
preciative eyes. 

“Spanish blood in this fellow,” thought Mc¬ 
Kay. “It sticks out all over him. Wonder if 
Jose’s tale was right, and this chap’s descended 
from Spanish stock. Wonder who they all are, 
anyhow. Wonder why we’re not killed at once. 
Oh well, we may learn.” 

Aloud he asked: “Who are you? Yameos?” 

“Men of the forest,” came the curt answer. 
“Now walk.” 

He tilted his head to the left, indicating the 
direction. The captives turned downstream. A 
couple of Indians glided in front of them and 
led the way. Behind the adventurers the main 
body closed in, walking in file, carrying the 
plunder from the canoes. 

Almost at once the five found themselves in 
a path. A narrowing, twisting trail through the 
forest, it was, and scarcely visible even to a man 


A LIFE FOR A LIFE 


99 


following it. But it was a path, perhaps a rod 
back from the edge of the bank, where the 
voyagers had supposed the bush to be utterly 
trackless; and along it the guiding pair slipped 
ahead as fast as if it were a broad highway. 
The bound men following found themselves hard 
put to it to maintain the speed set by the pace¬ 
makers, for their walking wind had been 
shortened by many days of river travel. Rand, 
limping along on torn leg muscles, found the 
going doubly hard. But he set his teeth and 
strove to keep up. 

It was the commander of the party who gave 
the word to slow down. He trod close at 
Rand’s heels, and he saw the lameness of the 
green-eyed man; but he made no effort to ease 
the prisoner’s difficulty until he himself felt the 
consequences of it. The injured leg, stiff and 
sore, failed to clear a projecting root, and Rand 
stumbled and fell. The Indian behind tripped 
over him and bumped his head sharply against 
a tree. He was up instantly, glaring at the 
prostrate man and at the tree he had hit; but 
he realized that the blame rested not on the 
prisoner but on the pace at which they were mov¬ 
ing. He snapped something at the guiding pair, 
who had continued on. They stopped. 

The leader glowered suspiciously at Rand’s 
leg, as if he thought the prisoner to be malinger¬ 
ing; for Rand now wore his boots, concealing 
the bandages around the limb. 



IOO 


TIGER RIVER 


“What ails the leg?” he demanded. “The 
forest is no place for the lame.” 

“The claws of a tigre,” panted Rand, still 
prone and snatching a moment’s rest. 

A quick light flickered in the hard eyes. 

“When did the claws of the tigre strike?” 

“Last night.” 

A short nod and a tightening of the mouth 
followed. Roughly he hauled Rand to his feet. 
To the pair ahead he grunted briefly. They re¬ 
sumed their advance, but at a slower pace. 
Wondering wh%t was in the leader’s mind, but 
thankful for slower progress, Rand went on. 

For perhaps two hours the march continued 
without a halt. Glancing from time to time at 
the sun-slanted shadows, the captives observed 
that they were working steadily southward. 
Now and then they caught gleams of water at 
their left, where the river wound close to the 
path and then veered ofl again. At length, at a 
cool little brook, the whole band stopped to 
drink. 

Here McKay asked a question which had been 
puzzling him. 

“Where do you get your guns?” 

“From men who came here before you,” was 
the straightforward answer. “We use them only 
for war. The yellow things that kill are few. 
From those men I learned the tongue you speak. 
From you we shall learn how to use these new 
guns—before you go.” 


A LIFE FOR A LIFE 


IOI 


As he spoke he frowned down at McKay’s 
own rifle, which he held in one hand. McKay 
had seen him trying to pull back the bolt, with¬ 
out first lifting it. So far as the Indian was con¬ 
cerned, the gun was locked tight. The captain 
did not enlighten him regarding the method of 
working a bolt action. 

“Before we go where?” he demanded. 

“Where the other men went.” 

His eyes strayed to Tim, red-bearded, red¬ 
headed. His shadowy smile flitted across his 
mouth and was gone. Abruptly he arose and 
gave the sign to move on. 

As they resumed their march, a chill crept up 
the backs of the five. All had seen that brief 
stare at red Tim and the slight smile that went 
with it. All knew this man had said that one of 
them should die. And all recalled the grim jest 
of Jose, made days before: that Tim’s hair would 
be braided into the hair belt of the Jivero who 
killed him. That careless joke now loomed as 
a prophecy. 

Yet on the heels of this thought came another 
—not one of their captors wore a girdle of 
human hair. They might not be Jiveros. Their 
commander had promised life to four of them. 
And—they could only march on, hoping for 
some miraculous change of luck. 

For another hour or more no word was 
spoken. The occasional sidelong glances of the 
captives showed them that they had left the 


102 


TIGER RIVER 


river, for no water-gleam now came to their eyes. 
At length they did meet water again, but it was 
a creek, not the river. Up along this they filed 
for a couple of hundred yards. Then they de¬ 
bouched into a clearing. 

An oval-shaped house of up-and-down logs, 
thickly thatched with palm; a knot of armed 
men standing before the door; several small mud 
huts around it; a plantation at the rear, with 
women at work—these were the first impressions 
of the white men. McKay, striding at the head 
of his unfortunate company and bulking tall over 
the heads of the two guides, noted three more 
things as they neared the big house: that it was 
big enough to hold a hundred people, that it 
looked much more new than the mud huts be¬ 
yond, and that the warriors before it showed 
signs of travel. Their faces lit up as they saw 
the captives, and they grunted as if they now 
saw something for which they had been hunting. 
The captain, used to watching faces, guessed thkt 
this party also had been out beating the bush in 
a search for strangers. 

Almost up to the door the captors and cap¬ 
tives went. Then the guides stopped. The 
prisoners halted. The Indians behind spread 
out and surrounded them in a half-horseshoe, 
open end toward the door. Through that door, 
without awaiting a summons, now came a man 
whom the newcomers knew to be the chief. 

Slightly taller than his men, past middle age, 


A LIFE FOR A LIFE 


103 


harsh of face, with brown eyes burning like 
tawny coals in deep sockets, he was a grim figure. 
In his thick black hair, unblanched by any sign 
of gray, parrot plumes rose as his crown of rank. 
Like his men, he wore a necklace of tiger claws; 
but, unlike them, he had also arm bands of big 
fang teeth, and—a hair girdle. 

Wide and thick and black was that sinister 
cincture, reaching from the waist to the loins. 
In it gleamed no lighter shade: no brown, no 
gold, no red. But every man of the five saw 
that the hollow eyes of the ruler, after passing 
along their faces, returned to the blond beard 
of Knowlton and the glinting red of Tim’s hair. 

He said no word until the report of the cap¬ 
ture was made. When the white Indian holding 
McKay’s gun finished his tale he pointed at Rand. 
The chief followed the gesture, looked down at 
the lame man’s boots, lifted his gaze and som¬ 
berly studied the impassive face of the former 
Raposa. Then he spoke. 

In a tone low but harsh as his face he ground 
out a curt sentence. Two men went to one of 
the little mud huts. Immediately they came out 
again, bearing between them a pole litter on 
which lay a rigid figure covered with big leaves. 

Straight up to the prisoners they came. On 
the ground before them they put the litter down. 
With a few swift motions they stripped the 
leaves from the still form. 

The five looked down at the dead face and 


TIGER RIVER 


104 

the torn throat of the wild man who had fallen 
fighting in the hollow tree. 

For a moment there was utter stillness. Then 
the whites, looking up, found the chief’s eyes 
boring into their faces. Abruptly he spoke again. 
The Spanish-speaking leader translated his 
words. 

“You have killed this man of mine. You have 
torn the throat of a hunter of my tribe and let 
out his spirit. For that you all should die. But 
there is other use for you. You shall live to pull 
the wheel. All but the man who killed my 
warrior. That man dies. Who is he?” 

McKay answered. 

“The great chief has it wrong. This man was 
killed by a tree splintered by storm. We took 
him off the splinter. We laid him back in the 
tree where no tigre could destroy him. We left 
two dead tigres to guard him. Let the chief 
blame the storm.” 

The hard mouth of the chief only grew tighter. 

“The storm harms us not. You men have 
killed my hunter. One of you must go down his 
trail and pay him for his life. One goes or 
all go.” 

His eyes dwelt on Rand, whose tiger-clawed 
leg had been reported to him. Then they shifted 
to Tim. Plainly he believed Rand to be the man 
most implicated in the death of his subject. Yet 
he obviously coveted the red man’s hair, and 
hoped he might be the guilty one. 


A LIFE FOR A LIFE 105 

“You know the man who killed,” he rasped. 
“Who is the man?” 

For a moment there was silence. The three 
soldiers, who had fronted death many times on 
another continent; the outlaw, who lived by his 
own deadliness; the former Wild Dog of the 
Javary jungle, who had roved for years among 
violent endings of life—all searched the relent¬ 
less visage of the chief. Through each man’s 
mind went the same thought: that through the 
death of one the rest should live. 

Moved by the same impulse, all stepped for¬ 
ward. Like one man all answered: 

"I!” 


CHAPTER X 

RED SPOTS 

F OR an instant every man of the five stood 
defiantly fronting the chief. Then each 
became aware of the fact that his com¬ 
rades also had volunteered for death. 

“Git back!” Tim muttered. “I’ll take this 

on! Git—” 

“It is mine I” hoarsely disputed Jose. “I am 

but an outlaw—let me-” 

“You both shut up!” growled Knowlton. “I 

was there and you guys weren’t-” 

Rand cut short the tragic argument. He 
strode across the body, limped up to the chief, 
and nodded. The chief nodded in response. 
The Indian directness of the move went straight 
to his mind, and the steady green eyes convinced 
him that here was the right man. 

Once more he spoke in the same harsh mono¬ 
tone. As before, the interpreter translated. 

“The sun of to-day sinks. Those who live 
shall see more suns rise. This man shall see one 
sun. While the stars shine you shall stay there.” 

The chief pointed to one of the mud hovels. 
Without another word he went back into the big 
house. 

Forthwith the five were herded to the desig- 





RED SPOTS 


107 


nated hut. At its entrance the leader halted 
them. At a word from him each man’s belt was 
unbuckled and, with its weapons dangling from 
it, taken away. Then, still bound, they were 
shoved into the dank interior. 

Leaving four warriors on guard outside the 
house, the rest went back to the tribe-house and 
busied themselves carrying in the loot. Until it 
was all transported, the dead man lay stark and 
still on the ground. Then two men grasped the 
litter and carried it away toward the rear of the 
place. 

“Thought so,” nodded McKay, who had been 
coolly watching. “They found that fellow early 
and saved him for a third-degree stunt. Sent 
one gang up-river and the other down. They 
traveled fast, and the upstream bunch caught us 
cold. The down-river detachment got back just 
before we came.” 

After eying the guards, who stood suggestively 
ready, he turned and looked about the bare 
prison from which Rand was to go forth to death 
at the next sunrise. As a place of confinement 
it was almost ideal, at least from the standpoint 
of the jailers; for it had no windows, its roof 
was a solid sheet of sun-baked clay supported by 
close-laid poles, and there was no possible means 
of exit except through the doorway, which could 
easily be blocked up and guarded. To men con¬ 
fined in it, however, it was a miserable hole-— 
damp, clammy, unprovided with either conveni- 


108 TIGER RIVER 

ences or necessities. No hammocks, no water— 
nothing at all was in it except a small cracked 
clay jar in one corner. 

“I don’t think much of this town’s guest 
house,” remarked Knowlton, sourly surveying 
the place. 

“And the things I’m thinkin’ about them guys 
that put us here ain’t fit to eat,” seconded Tim. 
“Now we’re in the coop they might untie us, if 
nothin’ more. Me hands are dead already from 
these ropes on me arms.” 

The others, with hands equally numb, nodded. 

“They may cut us loose later,” McKay en¬ 
couraged. “If not, I’ll do it.” 

“Huh? How?” 

“Jack-knife. Got one here in my right 
pocket.” 

“Yeah ? I got one, too, but I dunno how to git 
to it with me hands tied like this.” 

“Simple enough. One of you fellows get a 
couple of fingers into my pocket and fish it out. 
We can open it somehow and cut one man’s 
cords. Then he’ll free the rest of us.” 

“Gosh, ye think of everything, don’t ye, cap? 
That’ll help a lot, and a smoke afterwards will 
help a lot more. Then mebbe we can dope out 
some way to git clear o’ this place.” 

McKay made no answer to this. His glance 
strayed to Rand, who had sunk down against a 
wall and eased his aching leg out before him. 
Catching the look, Rand smiled somberly. 


RED SPOTS 


109 


“This leg won’t hurt me to-morrow at this 
time, Rod,” he said. 

Black scowls met his stoic jest. Think as they 
might, none could see any possibility of evading 
the execution at dawn. But none would admit it. 

“Por Dios, I would not be too sure of that, 
Sehor Dave,” protested Jose. “We have all 
night to work ourselves out of this place, even 
though they will bar the door. And if once I can 
get at the guards with cold steel-” 

He moved his jaw eloquently toward his throat. 

But Rand only shook his head slightly and 
contemplated the opposite wall. One by one the 
others sank down beside him and silently stared 
at the same wall, thinking, thinking, thinking— 
but seeing no hope. 

“If ye’d stayed where ye was, Dave, ’stead o’ 
walkin’ right up the chief’s stummick, ye’d be 
safe now,” Tim asserted morosely. “He wants 
this red mop o’ mine in his corset. Dang it, 
why didn’t ye keep quiet?” 

“Why didn’t you keep quiet?” countered 
Rand. “I’m the logical candidate anyway*. I 
jumped that Indian in the tree. Merry only fell 
on top of us, and you three weren’t there at all. 
Besides, I haven’t any folks up home, and I’m 
crippled for awhile with this leg, and—well, I’m 
the goat. Now shut up. There’s no more to 
say.” 

Tim growlingly subsided. For some time all 
sat wordless, moving only to ease their positions. 



no 


TIGER RIVER 


Outside, the guards stood watching steadily 
through the open doorway, and other tribesmen 
came, stood, stared, grunted among themselves, 
and went away. The sun-shadows, already long, 
slid faster and faster to the eastward as the 
earth rolled toward darkness. Within the house, 
the dimness shaded into dusk. 

At length Knowlton hitched forward, got to 
his knees, and heaved himself up. 

“Guess I can get that knife when you’re ready, 
Rod,” he said. “My hands aren’t quite so numb 
now. I’ve been holding my wrists close together 
to ease the cords.” 

“Wait for dark. We’re watched too closely 
now.” 

The blond man began pacing up and down. 
After a few turns he approached the cracked 
pot, kicked it out where the light was a little 
better, and peered at it. 

“Ugh!” he grunted. “Dried blood!” 

He gave it one more kick, knocking it back 
to the wall. It struck sharply and broke into 
chunks. One of them spun against Jose. The 
bushman glanced at it, then bent and looked 
closely. 

“Not blood,” he corrected. “It is too red. 
This is an old pot of anatto dye, which they use 
to color their red loin cloths.” 

Yawning, he got up and strode to the door¬ 
way. The guards drew together and fronted 
him with weapons ready. 


RED SPOTS 


in 


“Oh, do not fear, poor little ones,” sneered 
the outlaw. “I will not attack you—not yet. I 
want water. Water, you fools! My throat is 
parched.” 

The Indians made no response. They only 
watched, uncomprehending. 

“Agua!” roared Jose. “Water! You wood- 
heads, you rocks—agua!” 

From a group near the door of the big house 
came the leader of the gang which had caught 
them. 

“Agua!” Jose yelled again. “Water, and 
food, too! Will you starve us and choke us with 
thirst? Agua! Carne!” 

The advancing Indian scowled at the imperi¬ 
ous tone. But, after a gesture with one finger, 
he grunted something to another man near by. 
The man went along the curving wall of the 
tribe-house and barked something at women 
near a rear door. Presently several women ap¬ 
proached, bearing clay jars and platters. 

Reaching the guards, they stopped and stared 
fearfully at the gaunt red-capped outlaw, who 
still stood scowling in the doorway. They were 
young and good-looking, as light-skinned as their 
men, clothed only in short hip-bands of the red 
fiber cloth worn by the warriors; but Jose 
showed them scant courtesy. 

“Make haste!” he snarled. “We do not want 
to look at you, but to eat and drink. Come 
here!” 


112 


TIGER RIVER 


Instead, they retreated. The Indian leader 
spoke curtly. They hastily put down their bur¬ 
dens and fled back to the rear door. Men came 
forward and carried the victuals into the prison 
pen. 

“How are we to eat without hands?” de¬ 
manded Jose. “Are you afraid to untie us even 
when we are penned up and without weapons? 
You are brave!” 

The commander scowled again. Then his 
eyes fastened on something peeping over the 
Peruvian’s waistband. In two steps and a clutch 
he had it—a hidden knife, whose hilt had worked 
up into view unnoticed by its owner. 

Without a word he turned the chagrined out¬ 
law around and cut his bonds. Then, with a 
sneering smile, he threw down the knife and 
stalked out. 

With a muttered oath, Jose worked his 
stiffened fingers a minute or two, then picked up 
the keen weapon in mingled relief and rage— 
the rage due to the contemptuous manner in 
which the Indian had answered his taunt. Out¬ 
side, the savage watched, then spoke. 

“Eat well. When you are on the wheel you 
will not feast. Use your knife to kill yourself 
to-night if you will. It may be better for you.” 

While Jose stared at him he strode away. 

In less than half a minute the floor was littered 
with severed cords, the Americans were rubbing 
their numbed hands together, and Jose’s knife 


RED SPOTS 


113 

had vanished into its secret sheath. In another 
minute all were squatting in jungle style around 
the food and water. The bill of fare was fish, 
fruit, and meat—the first two sweet and fresh, 
the meat offensive to both nose and palate. How¬ 
ever, the meat went the way of the rest; and 
when Jose, with an ironical bow to the guards, 
put the dishes outside the door they were bare. 

“I notice they keep speaking of a wheel,” re¬ 
marked Knowlton, when his cigarette was going. 
“Seems to be something unpleasant.” 

“I believe the old Spanish Inquisition had a 
wheel,” suggested McKay. 

“Umph! Hope it’s nothing like that. Be¬ 
sides, that fellow promised no torture. What 
do you make of it, Jose, and of these people?” 

“Of the wheel I make nothing, sehor. I can¬ 
not guess what it may be. Of the people I make 
only this: they are not shrinkers of heads, unless 
the heads are kept in the big house, which may 
be possible. We have seen none. At the same 
time, they have the Jivero custom of keeping the 
women apart from the men; there is a separate 
door at the rear for them. They are like Jiveros 
in some ways, unlike them in others—keeping us 
alive, for one. They have not been here many 
months; their big house is too new. If I could 
have my way they would not be here one hour 
longer, but in hell.” 

“Yeah. Ye said a mouthful that time,” con¬ 
tributed Tim. “But wishin’ don’t git us nothin’. 


TIGER RIVER 


114 

If it did I’d wisht for one o’ them diseases they’re 
so scairt of. I bet if we broke out with smallpox 
or measles or somethin’ over night they’d knock 
down the whole jungle runnin’ away from us. 
Hullo, here comes more trouble.” 

A dozen men were coming across the stumpy 
clearing, bearing spears and short but heavy 
logs. The prisoners arose and stood alert— 
Tim with fists shut, Jose with a hand on his 
knife, McKay and Rand feeling for clasp-knives 
in their pockets, Knowlton holding a jagged sec¬ 
tion of the shattered dye-pot. But none of the 
Indians entered the hut. They dropped their 
logs at the doorway. Two more came up with 
stout poles. 

While the prisoners watched, the poles were 
set into deep holes at each side of the doorway. 
The log sections were piled on one another, be¬ 
tween poles and wall, across the entrance. In 
a few minutes the doorway was blocked by a 
solid wall of logs reaching from the ground to 
within a hand’s breadth of the top, where a small 
opening was left to admit air. Then came 
sounds of men walking on the low roof, and the 
barrier, which had hung outward a little against 
the poles, was forced back tight against the door 
edges as if drawn by ropes around the uprights. 

“Crude jail door, but mighty effective,” com¬ 
mented Rand. “They’ve roped it back against 
a big tree just behind here. It would take us a 
week to break out.” 


RED SPOTS 


ii5 

As if in answer, through the air-hole came the 
warning voice of the Spanish-speaking Indian. 

“Men watch through the night. If this wall 
moves they kill.” 

No answer came from the prisoners, who now 
stood in dense gloom. Voices grunted outside, 
and a whiff of smoke drifted in. Almost at once 
the last sunlight vanished from the farther jun¬ 
gle. The night noise of animals and frogs broke 
out. Through the air-hole a yellowish light 
glimmered and the hiss of flames sounded. The 
guards had started a protective fire and were 
settling themselves for their vigil until dawn. 

“Well,” came Rand’s unemotional voice, 
“guess I’ll curl up for a good sleep.” 

“Wait a minute,” shot Knowlton, a quiver in 
his tone. “Thanks to Tim, I have an idea. 
Thanks to a chafed knee, I have a little can of 
talcum powder in my pocket. Thanks to luck, 
we have water and some dried anatto dye. Rod, 
is your flashlight in your shirt pocket as usual?” 

“Yes. Why?” 

“Here’s why. Those fellows outside are dead 
afraid of disease. Now listen hard.” 

His voice mumbled rapidly for a minute. 
Then sounded a subdued chorus of approval. 

“Por Dios, it will do!” 

“By cripes, ye got the right dope, looey!” 

“Good head, Merry. We’ll try it out.” 

Jose stole to the door and, through the air- 
slit, watched the guards at their fire. The others 


n6 


TIGER RIVER 


huddled in a corner, where, in the white sheen 
of the little electric ray, they worked with pow¬ 
der and moistened dye. They worked slowly 
and with extreme care. At length McKay strode 
to Jose and muttered: “All right. Your turn 
next.” 

The outlaw stepped to the corner, and the tall 
captain stood guard at the slit. For a while 
longer the white light in the corner burned. 
Then it winked out. 

“All set, Rod,” said Knowlton. “We can 
turn in now.” 

The five stretched themselves on the floor. 

The night wore on. To the ears of the squat¬ 
ting guards came the roars of prowling tigres, 
the howls of cotomonos, the other night noises 
of the tropic forest. But from the prison came 
no sound. 

At length two of them arose, advanced with 
a torch, narrowly inspected the log wall, listened, 
passed around the house, looked at the roof, 
listened again at the door. At that moment came 
a dread sound from within: groans of a man in 
deadly pain and sickness. Followed other voices 
and a sound of water being poured. Then, ex¬ 
cept for more groans, all was still. 

The pair stared soberly at each other. Then 
they slipped back to the fire and told their mates. 
None went near the door again. All watched it 
and listened. 

Came a babbling voice, broken by louder 


RED SPOTS 


117 

groans and piteous appeals for water. Presently 
it rose to a shrill, terrible note like that of a 
death-scream. This was followed by an out¬ 
break of exclamations, questions, calls to one 
who did not reply, scaling down into mumbling 
tones. Then came silence again. 

The stars rolled westward. The dank chill 
of the hours before dawn made the guards shiver 
and draw close to the fire. At last a wan light 
came into the sky, brightening fast. The animal 
world roused itself to its daybreak clamor. The 
door of the tribe-house opened. Men emerged, 
and the guards rose to meet them. 

They grunted rapidly, pointing to the clay 
prison. A worried scowl came on the faces of 
their auditors, among whom was the leader who 
spoke Spanish. After a moment of hesitation 
he walked to the mud house and ordered the 
others to release the door. As quickly as possible 
they obeyed, pulling out half of the logs. Then 
they retreated. 

Within the hut the leader saw only dimness. 
He stepped closer and leaned inside. For a mo¬ 
ment he stood petrified. Then he sprang back. 

Rigid on the floor before him lay the man 
who was to have been executed that morning. 
His jaw hung slack. His upturned face was 
ghastly with the pallor of death. And against 
that awful pallor stood out a thick sprinkling of 
malevolent reddish spots. 


CHAPTER XI 

THE LOOTER 

A HOLLOW groan echoed out from the 
dank pen. 

Before the starting eyes of the Indians, 
a white man came reeling from a dark corner at 
the rear—the tall black-bearded one. His groan 
was echoed by another, and a second figure stag¬ 
gered into sight: the blond mai; with the band¬ 
aged head. Both were blanched and haggard of 
face. And on each of those faces, on their necks, 
and on their arms as well, flamed virulent spots 
far more red and appalling than those of the 
corpse. 

They lurched to the doorway and hung there, 
staring glassily. Hoarsely they begged: 

“Agua I Water—for the dying!” 

Frozen, dry-mouthed, the savages stood star¬ 
ing speechless at the frightfully diseased crea¬ 
tures who yesterday had been strong man. 

“Agua!” croaked the pair again. Then, with 
the desperation of beings already doomed, 
they came crawling over the logs and lunged 
straight at their captors, reaching for them 
with the malignantly spotted hands. Behind 
them appeared two more men—the red¬ 
headed one and the hawk-faced Spaniard—and 


THE LOOTER 


119 

on them, too, glared the blotches of deadly 
contagion. 

In that instant the wild men of the jungle 
ceased to be men. They became screaming crea¬ 
tures bereft of sense and reason by frenzied fear. 
From bullets, from cold steel, from poisoned 
arrows or spears they would not have retreated 
an inch; but from those lunging, reaching corpses 
whose touch meant hideous death to all their 
tribe—they recoiled, collided, struck and clawed 
one another, fought madly to get away, and, 
shrieking, bolted for their tribal house. 

But that house, a fortress against jungle 
enemies, was no defense against the dread thing 
pursuing them now. Somehow the dying men 
found the strength to run after them, treading 
close on their flying heels and reaching, reaching, 
reaching for them, grinning horribly as they sped. 
There was no time to throw the stout door of 
their home into place and bar out those awful 
creatures. Before they could even struggle 
through the opening the two foremost pursuers 
got their clammy clutches on three or four of 
them—clutches which did not hold, but which 
froze their hearts with insane terror. 

Screeching like lost souls harried through 
Hades by malicious demons, they fought through 
the portal and ran madly on toward the door 
connecting the quarters of the warriors with 
those of the women. To their horror-struck 
fellows they gasped the frightful news as they 


120 


TIGER RIVER 


fled. Paralyzed for an instant, those who heard 
the fatal tidings gaped at the doorway and saw 
the red-spotted apparitions coming relentlessly 
on. The wave of fear which had swept the first 
fugitives into flight engulfed them also. The big 
house became a chaos of frenzied men. 

The chief himself, standing beside his ham¬ 
mock with a throwing-spear poised for attack, 
was caught in the mob terror sweeping the place. 
For a minute he stood his ground, fighting 
against the chill that enwrapped his heart. If 
the advancing dead-alive men had hesitated he 
would have held his position, hurling one javelin 
after another at them. But they did not hesi¬ 
tate, did not waver. With inexorable tread they 
came straight at him, grinning those grisly grins, 
stretching out hands empty but more menacing 
than if they held weapons. 

His hollow eyes darted aside. His mouth 
writhed in repulsion. With a choking grunt he 
hurled his spear at the black-bearded specter in 
the lead. McKay, watching keenly, lurched 
aside. The missile flew wild. The chief spun 
about and leaped headlong away toward the thin 
partition beyond which were the women’s 
quarters. 

Under the weight of the men hurling them¬ 
selves at the one small door, that partition cawed 
in and collapsed. Among its fragments the 
howling mob struggled, fell, scrambled up and 
dashed on toward the exit, already jammed with 


THE LOOTER 


121 


women shrieking and clawing their way out. 
For a moment or two a panic-stricken maelstrom 
swirled about that door. Then at last, bruised 
and scratched and bleeding, the whole tribe was 
outside and rushing for the shelter of the forest. 

Had any of them paused to look back toward 
the mud prison, he would have seen a thing which 
might either have restored his reason or knocked 
the last vestige of sense from his quivering brain. 
There among the stumps, halfway across the 
clearing and heading for the tribe house, was 
swiftly creeping a fifth red-spotted man: the dead 
man who had lain just within the doorway when 
the logs were taken down; the man who was to 
have borne the vengeance of the tribe for the 
death of the hunter. But none paused. Men, 
women, children, old and young, strong and 
weak, all tore for the protecting labyrinth of tree 
and bush. And the dead man reached the house 
and vanished. 

Within the doorway, Rand found a scene of 
wreckage which suggested the devastation of an 
exploding shell. Hammocks were torn down, 
weapons lay scattered over the floor, clay cook¬ 
ing vessels were overturned and shattered, the 
debris of the partition jutted in jagged segments, 
and smoke from the newly lit breakfast fires 
drifted over all. In the midst of it he saw his 
comrades, grouped at the chief’s hammock^ 
swiftly buckling on their weapon-belts, gathering 
up their rifles and axes and hammocks, stuffing 


122 


TIGER RIVER 


into pockets and shirts small parts of their 
plundered equipment which could be carried away 
without hampering their movements. As fast as 
he could he limped to them. 

“Here’s Dave!” rumbled Tim. “Hullo, ye 
dog-gone stiff! Who said ye could come alive? 
Don’t ye know ye croaked with smallpox last 
night? Wal, now shake a leg. We got to move, 
double time.” 

The green-eyed man was moving already. In 
a few fleeting seconds he was belted and armed 
like the rest. 

“Hate to leave so much of our duffle,” 
grumbled Knowlton, “but we have to flit from 
this festive scene while the flitting is good, and 
pack animals are bum flitters. If we can get 
back to the canoes we’ll find our cans of grub 
and cartridges there, anyhow.” 

“Si,” grinned Jose, “and if these Indios fol¬ 
low us there they will soon learn that I told no 
lie when I said those bullet-tins were filled with 
quick death. And when they return here they 
will find none of our plunder waiting for them. 
If we cannot have it, they shall not. Hold my 
rifle a moment.” 

With which he snatched blazing sticks from 
the chief’s fire and bounded to the smashed par¬ 
tition. Swiftly he worked along the debris, firing 
it in a dozen places. It flamed up instantly, the 
blaze crawling rapidly up to the tindery palm- 
thatch roof. 


THE LOOTER 


123 


“An affectionate adios to the gentleman who 
advised me to kill myself before morning,” he 
chuckled, loping back. “Now outside, comrades! 
If we go quickly we may go unseen. They ran 
into the bush at the rear—we go out at the 
front—the house hides us. Come I” 

Out to the entrance they strode. A quick 
glance around, and they struck for the path, 
which opened ahead. At every step they ex¬ 
pected to hear a yell from the jungle behind, 
announcing that they had been sighted. But 
none came. 

Into the bush they plunged. There, for the 
space of one brief glance, they paused to look 
back. Already the tribe-house was vomiting 
black clouds from roof and doors. Up from the 
smoke-hole at the peak darted a flare of flame. 
Even if the whole tribe should rush back to it 
now, it was doomed. So was any man who 
dared to enter it. 

“Jose, take the lead,” commanded McKay. 
“Dave, you march second. Tim and Merry, fol¬ 
low in file. March!” 

Thus, in four crisp sentences, he arranged his 
little command in the most effective order: the 
veteran bushman as guide, the injured man 
where his bad leg would not compel him to fall 
behind the rest, and the bulk of his fighting force 
instantly available for rear-guard action. Mc¬ 
Kay, in the post of danger, strode behind, keep¬ 
ing a watchful eye and ear open toward the rear. 


124 


TIGER RIVER 


For a time all forged ahead in silence, Jose 
picking the dim trail with unerring eye, Rand 
stoically hobbling onward at good speed, Tim 
and Knowlton careful not to crowd their lame 
comrade. Presently Knowlton began to chuckle. 

“Did it work?” he exulted. “Oh, boy! We 
sure must be a handsome gang of corpses, from 
the reception we got. Dave, you missed the best 
show of your life.” 

“Didn’t miss much,” Rand denied. “I came 
to life in time to watch you chase them into the 
house. Saw them come yelping out of the back 
door, too. Finest free fight I ever clapped an 
eye on. 

“Yeah,” assented Tim. “I dang near laffed 
out loud when they busted right through the 
wall. Seemed like I was back home watchin’ a 
movie show. Gosh, I’ll be glad when I can wash 
this powder off me face. I feel like a chorus 
girl.” 

“Silence in the ranks!” snapped the captain. 
But his mouth twitched as the ludicrous side of 
it struck him too. Again he saw the chief turn 
tail and fight madly with his own men in flight 
from four faces whitened with talcum and dotted 
with harmless dye-spots. And as he caught a 
subdued humming from Tim and recognized the 
air he laughed silently. The ex-sergeant was 
softly singing to himself an army tune beginning: 

“One battalion jumped right over the other 
battalion’s back-” 


THE LOOTER 


125 


But the smile vanished in a flash, and he 
wheeled. Muflled, almost deadened by the in¬ 
tervening jungle, a roar of raging yells sounded 
back at the clearing where the tribe-house now 
must be a belching furnace. The Indians had 
returned to their toppling stronghold. 

‘‘Sounds like the beginning of another party,” 
muttered Knowlton, inching back his breech-bolt 
to make sure his gun still was loaded. 

“Uh-huh. But they sure are crazy if they 
foller us up,” said Tim. “They ain’t got nothin’ 
to fight with but hands and teeth. They dropped 
everything when they made their gitaway, and 
all their weppins are burnt. We could easy mas- 
sacree the whole layout.” 

For the first time the full extent of Jose’s 
revenge on the Indians dawned on the rest. He 
had not merely burned their house: he had 
plunged the whole tribe into the most abject pov¬ 
erty, if not into actual tragedy. They were with¬ 
out shelter, save for the few small, wretched clay 
huts; without food except for the products of 
the plantation which they had trampled down 
in their flight; without weapons, in a savage 
jungle where weapons meant life. True, they 
could exist, and no doubt would exist, until 
they could rehabilitate themselves. But for 
a time they would be virtually at the mercy 
of any fate that came their way, and for a 
longer time they would be a weak, disorgan¬ 
ized tribe. 


126 


TIGER RIVER 


“Guess their morale has suffered a severe 
jolt,” McKay summarized it. “But they’ll make 
it hot for us if they can.” 

And there was no relaxing of alertness as the 
little column went on. All knew that they left 
behind them a plain trail; that soon the absence 
of the dead man and the presence of the tell¬ 
tale broken dye-pot would be discovered; that 
somewhere an unbroken bow and a few arrows 
might yet remain; and that only five arrows, 
skillfully shot, were needed to wipe out their 
whole party. Wherefore silence and vigilance 
again ruled. 

But whatever the furious white Indians may 
have thirsted to do was not done. The adven¬ 
turers, once more doggedly heading toward the 
mysterious cordillera to the north, wound stead¬ 
ily onward without attack. They passed from 
the creek into the streamless shadows, through 
them to the water-gleams of the river, up along 
the Tigre Yacu to the first rocks, where yester¬ 
day they had found gold and capture. To-day, 
at the same spot, they found something equally 
unexpected. 

Approaching it, they heard sounds which at 
first seemed to be the recurrent murmur of the 
water. A few rods farther on, they slowed and 
listened hard; for now the mutter seemed to be 
that of voices. Jose, scowling, slipped on ahead, 
motioning to the rest to wait. Hardly had he 
disappeared among the trees when an unmistak- 


127 


THE LOOTER 

able noise broke through the curtain of brush— 
the thump of a heavily laden tin container. 

“By cripes, some more guys are at our stuff!” 
fiercely whispered Tim. “Lemme git by, Dave. 
I’ll learn ’em somethin’, the mutts!” 

Rand, however, declined to yield his place 
or to be hurried. Despite his injury, he was 
creeping forward with the old stealth that 
had been his when he was the Wild Dog of 
the Javary. Tim swallowed his impatience and 
trailed him in silence, Knowlton and McKay 
close behind. 

The thumping sound came again, and with it 
a voice that seemed familiar, speaking Spanish. 
In it was a note of malicious joy, with an under¬ 
tone of fear. 

“So the illustrious gentlemen have gone to 
the devil as they said they would. Ha! Ha! 
‘A quick voyage to you,’ I said, and so it was. 
My polite senores, I trust that you now roast 
comfortably in hell. Ha, ha! Quick, you 
clumsy ladroncillo! Take this one also. Los 
Indios blancos—the white Indians—may be close 
to us.” 

Another bump. Then the sarcastic voice of 
Jose. 

“For your good wishes I thank you, Senor 
Bocaza (Big Mouth). But I think it is you 
who goes to the devil.” 

With a rush the Americans emerged from the 
bush beside Jose. The Peruvian, with a leering 


128 


TIGER RIVER 


grin, was sighting down the barrel of his rifle. 
On the river lay a newly arrived canoe—a two- 
man craft. In it, bending over with his hands 
on one of the American cases, stood the Indian 
whom Jose had chastised at San Regis. On the 
farther bank, clutching another case, his face 
blanched yellow-white, crouched the Moyobam- 
bino trader, Torribio Maldonado. 


CHAPTER XII 

DEATH PASSES 

S HOCKED speechless, the rascally trader 
squatted rigidly for a moment, eyes and 
mouth gaping at the men whom he had just 
consigned to eternal torment. Then his lips 
moved. 

“Cien mil diablos!” he gasped. 

“Do you say so?” mocked Jose. “A hundred 
thousand devils ? I did not know there were so 
many. I know only one—the great horned devil 
of them all. The others must be mean little 
diablillos like yourself. If they are not too proud 
to associate with you they will soon have a new 
companion. Flow will you have your traveling 
ticket—in the head or the stomach?” 

The yellow pallor of the other became ghastly. 
He tried to shrink behind the tin case, which was 
far too small to hide him. 

“San Pablo! Santo Tomas! Santa Ana!” he 
mouthed. Then, in desperation, he rose quiver¬ 
ing to his feet. 

“Amigo mio,” he whined, “I was but taking 
your goods to a safe place where the accursed 
Indios would not get them, and where I could 
start a party to search for you. I thought you 
were captured-” 


129 



130 


TIGER RIVER 


“And so we were,” taunted the outlaw. “Per¬ 
haps you stirred up those Indios blancos to hunt 
us down, yes? That would be a true Moyo- 
bamba trick.” 

“But no—Santo Domingo, no! Never would 
I do such a thing. I am mad with joy to find 
you alive, amigos! Only put down that gun— 
it gives me a coldness in the middle, though I 
know you are only having your little joke—ha, 
ha! Only put down the gun, Don Jose.” 

Jose’s eye flickered over his gun-sight. His 
trigger finger tightened by a hair’s weight. Then 
it loosened. 

“Don Jose?” he purred menacingly. “What 
is the rest of the name, you who know so much?” 

“Martinez. Oh, yes, I know you, Don Jose. 
Who has not heard of the famous-” 

“Pah! Your lies and your flattery both sicken 
me! Once I was a don, a Caballero, but you 
know nothing of those days. All you know is 
that I am a killer of men. Of men, not of whin¬ 
ing pups. I will not waste a precious bullet on 
you. I will save it for an Indian, a snake, a 
monkey—something worth killing.” 

The menacing muzzle sank. But, as the 
Moyobambino began sidling toward his canoe, 
it rose again. 

“Not so fast! Pick up that case under your 
hands and carry it into the San Regis canoe near¬ 
est to you. Then carry all the others and pack 
them carefully, every one. If you miss one, you 



DEATH PASSES 


131 

ladron, or forget to take one out of your own 
boat, you go floating down the Tigre with a hole 
in your liver. Now work!” 

The Senor Torribio Maldonado worked. Per¬ 
spiring profusely, he packed those cases with 
faultless precision and extreme dispatch. Mean¬ 
while the Americans, though watching appre¬ 
ciatively, kept their ears open for any sound 
from behind. None came. 

“Shall we let him go, capitan, or take him with 
us?” Jose queried in an undertone. “We can 
use the pair of them for work-slaves and punish 
them well for sneaking after us in this way, and 
we shall know they stir up no trouble behind 
us.” 

McKay studied him quizzically. The hard 
face of the descendant of the Conquistadores 
showed that he was not joking. Left to his own 
inclinations, he would make that pair sweat 
blood in the days to come. 

“Don’t want them,” the captain refused. 
“More trouble than they’re worth.” 

“I will see that they give no trouble,” was the 
significant promise. 

“So will I—by not having them around. I 
told you, back on the Marahon, that this fellow 
was your meat, but I’ll take charge now.” 

“As you wish, capitan.” 

McKay motioned, and his four mates went 
with him into the stream. Maldonado watched 
their approach with obvious misgiving, but he 


132 


TIGER RIVER 


dare not attempt to flee. On the farther shore 
McKay faced him. 

“You! Do you want to live?” he snapped. 
“If you-what’s the matter with you?” 

Maldonado had shrunk back, staring from 
face to face, a new terror in his eyes. 

“The spots!” he breathed. “Your faces— 
your hands-” 

“It is la fiebre encarnada—the red fever,” in¬ 
terrupted Jose, grinning wickedly. “You do not 
know the red fever? No? We caught it among 
your friends the white Indians, back yonder. 
They have it much worse than we. It drives 
men mad, Torribio. Those wild men were 
tearing their own house apart when we came 
away, they were so mad from the red spots. 
At any moment we, too, may become crazed. 
Hah!” 

With a horrible grimace, he shot out one red- 
spotted hand and rubbed it over the Moyobam- 
bino’s face. Squeaking with fear, the wretch 
tripped backward, sprawled over the edge, 
soused into the water. He came up gasping, and 
scrambled into his own canoe. 

“Go!” rasped McKay, gritting his teeth to 
hold a stern face. “This is your last chance. 
Paddle hard to the great river and you may live. 
Otherwise-” 

He paused. The trader, now all atremble be¬ 
tween his fear of Jose, of the white Indians, 
and of this new disease of the river of evil re- 





DEATH PASSES 


133 


pute, did not wait to hear what might happen 
otherwise. He went. 

His canoe bumped between the bowlders and 
fled downstream, the Indian and his master heav¬ 
ing it away with strokes that bent their tough 
paddles. Rapidly it diminished to a blot at the 
apex of twin angular ripples, the paddle blades 
winking fast in the sunlight. Then it darted out 
of sight around a turn. 

A chorus of chuckles sounded on the shore 
where the five watched the flight. 

“And so the River of Missing Men sends back 
two more bold hearts,” laughed Knowlton. 
“They’ll have a brave tale to tell when they re¬ 
turn to San Regis.” 

“The river has not yet returned them to that 
town,” suggested Rand. 

“Meanin’ they may git swallered by somethin’ 
before they git clear?” guessed Tim. “Begorry, 
they might, at that. If them white Injuns catch 
’em foul they’ll be out o’ luck. Serves ’em good 
and right, too, the dirty cache-robbers!” 

“I have a feeling, comrades, that we have not 
yet seen the last of that pair,” Jose somberly 
stated. “I wish I had them under my thumb— 
or that my old rifle had accidently exploded when 
it pointed at the Moyobambino. But they are 
gone, and we waste time here.” 

McKay nodded and gestured toward the 
canoes. With one more keen look at the sur¬ 
rounding bush and a swift survey to make sure 


134 


TIGER RIVER 


nothing was overlooked on the ground, the voy¬ 
agers returned to their respective boats. A 
little later the bowlders around which had cen¬ 
tered treasure-hunting, peril, capture, theft, 
mockery, and fear, were alone once more in a 
stretch of empty river. 

A mile upstream the five spotted men slowed 
their strokes. Before them rose more rocks. 
Like the first obstructions, however, they were 
few, and not high enough or close enough to 
cause much difficulty to canoes. But before 
traveling much farther every man needed to get 
into the tins which had just been saved from the 
clutches of the Moyobambino. Their stomachs 
were empty and their cartridges few. 

So, beyond the bowlders, they halted. Jose, 
watching the flat boxes of cartridges emerge 
from one of the ammunition tins, smiled 
wryly. 

“I should have brought with me a tin box like 
yours, amigos,” he said. “Or else I should have 
remembered to find some bullets before leaving 
our Indian friends. Now all the cartridges they 
took from me are exploded in the fire I set, and 
I have only five left in all the world. Senor 
Dave, you must make for me a bow and some 
arrows.” 

Rand smiled and shook his head. 

“Not unless we’ve lost a can,” he said. “Tim, 
is the forty-four tin still there?” 

“Uh-huh. Safe and solid. Wait a minute, 


DEATH PASSES 135 

Hozy, ol’-timer, and I’ll give ye all the cannon 
balls ye want.” 

To the Peruvian’s amazement and joy, he was 
speedily presented with a clean, dry carton of 
the heavy bullets that fitted his gun. 

“Trade stuff,” McKay explained. “We don’t 
use forty-four caliber ourselves, but it’s so 
commonly used in the jungle that we brought 
a batch of it over the Andes. Lots of times 
a few forty-four slugs will buy more than you 
could purchase with five times their value in 
money.” 

“True, capitan. And to me they are worth 
more than all the gold that may be ahead. Now 
that I have them, I am curious to know whether 
that path of the white Indians still follows this 
stream upward. So I will take a little walk over 
yonder while you open some food.” 

Dumping his ammunition into his capacious 
right-hand pocket, he shoved his canoe across the 
stream, climbed the bank, and disappeared. 

“Queer thing about that path,” remarked 
Rand. “It’s a good deal older than the clear¬ 
ing and the tribe-house of the Indians back 
yonder. Been here longer.” 

The others frowned thoughtfully. Their 
eyes, though experienced by previous jungle 
travel, were not trained to note the slight differ¬ 
entiations which were so obvious to the former 
wild man; but even they had noticed that the 
tribe house seemed quite new. Now, while they 


TIGER RIVER 


136 

labored with can-openers and gouged beef out 
of the cans, they pondered. 

“OF Injun trail, prob’ly,” hazarded Tim. 
“Been used a hundred years, mebbe, by the wild 
guys travelin’ up and down.” 

“Quite likely. Wish my leg was in good hik¬ 
ing condition. I’d like to leave the canoes and 
hit the trail. It probably goes to where we’re 
heading for, and canoeing will be work from 
now on.” 

“Yeah? ’Tain’t been work up to here, o’ 
course not. But I’m game to stick to these here 
dugouts a long while before I make meself an 
army jackass and buck the bush with tin cans 
hung all over me. Besides, we dunno if that 
path does go to the right place—might lead us 
right into some head-hunter town. Nope, me 
for the river as long as she holds out. And I’m 
goin’ to use some of it right now.” 

Wherewith he began scrubbing the sweat- 
streaked talcum powder and the dye-spots from 
his face. The others followed his example—but 
not all at once. Rand and Knowlton waited, 
with hands on rifles and eyes scanning water and 
tree line, until the other two were through with 
their ablutions. Then they took their turn, while 
their clean-faced companions watched. 

“Funny we don’t hear nothin’ from Hozy, 
cap,” muttered Tim. “Thought he’d be right 
back.” 

McKay made no answer. But his eyes rested 


DEATH PASSES 


137 


on the Peruvian’s canoe, noting that its owner, 
with habitual caution, had left it under some 
drooping ferns which would mask it from above. 
Then they roved up the creeping water, pausing 
at a spot some rods farther on, where other ferns 
formed a good covert. As Rand and Knowlton 
lifted their wet faces he pointed upstream. 

“We’ll move up there,” he said. After a look 
at him and at the bank, the others dipped their 
paddles. The twin dugouts slid across and up¬ 
ward and floated under cover. 

The lieutenant lifted inquiring brows, getting 
in return a noncommittal wave of the hand. For 
a little time all sat in silence. All at once Rand 
grew tense. 

His fingers tightened over his rifle. He leaned 
a little forward, all his senses concentrated into 
listening. To the ears of the others came no 
new sound: no sound whatever, unless it was a 
barely audible rustle which held a moment, then 
died, like the soft sigh of a passing breeze. But 
Rand’s head slowly turned, following that tiny 
murmur downstream. After it had died away 
he still held that alert poise. 

Presently his gaze swung to the faces of his 
companions, who were watching him keenly. 
Soundlessly his lips formed one word: 

“Men!” 

McKay pointed a thumb backward, mutely 
asking if the men had gone down the river. The 
ex-roamer of the jungle nodded. 


TIGER RIVER 


138 

All watched toward the rocks below. No 
sight or sound of human life came. From where 
they lurked they could not see the empty canoe 
of Jose. In every mind grew the same question: 
what had become of him? 

At length the question was answered. 
Stealthy dips of a paddle floated to them, and a 
ripple curved along the water. The bow of the 
outlaw’s canoe appeared, hugging the shore. 
Above it moved a black-haired head, minus the 
piratical red handkerchief. Stroking carefully, 
Jose slipped up to them. 

“Por Dios, you are wise, capitan!” he whis¬ 
pered. “You shifted in good time. I could not 
get back to warn you, and I have been sweating 
blood, expecting to hear you attacked. 

“The path is there, amigos. It is close to the 
water along here. And down it have just gone 
thirty Jiveros 1 The head shrinkers!” 


CHAPTER XIII 


FOLLOWED 

M cKAY reached to the newly opened am¬ 
munition tin. 

Silently he extracted box after box of 
soft-point cartridges and passed them to his com¬ 
panions. With equal silence each of the Ameri¬ 
cans received the flat packets, slit the thin paper 
seals with a thumb-nail, turned back the covers, 
and placed the boxes on the bottoms of the 
canoes, the grim brass heads ready within in¬ 
stant reach. Boxes of forty-fives followed, and 
the spare clips of the belt guns were given quick 
but thorough inspection. Finally Tim beckoned 
Jose closer, and, with a muffled grunt, lifted the 
entire case of forty-fours into the outlaw’s craft. 
“They’re yourn,” he stage-whispered. 

The Peruvian made no reply in words, but his 
shining eyes spoke for him. So did the swift 
swoop of his hand into the tin and his affection¬ 
ate gaze at the cartons of death-dealing cylinders 
he brought forth. But he wasted no time in 
gloating over his treasure. After exposing the 
shining discs and the dull gray leads to the sun 
he turned and watched downstream. 

Minutes dragged away while the hidden five 
squatted under the ferns, holding the canoe 
139 


140 


TIGER RIVER 


motionless by gripping the bank, straining eyes 
and ears for sight of savage figures near the 
rocks or for any returning rustle. Then Jose let 
his gaze wander to the opened beef tins. 

“I believe, senores, we halted here to eat,” 
he suggested. 

The broad hint met with immediate response. 
Hands relaxed from their grips on the guns, and 
the guns themselves were laid softly down. A 
minute later every one was wolfing food. 

“No smoking,” refused McKay, as Tim, after 
devouring his meat and gulping a gourd of river 
water, reached for his “makings.” The big 
freckled hand hesitated, then reluctantly came 
away from the shirt pocket. 

“Dang it, I ain’t had a drag since last night,” 
grumbled the red man. “Say, are we goin’ to 
keep duckin’ and hidin’ and goin’ without smokes 
on account of a bunch o’ bare-backed boobs like 
them there, now, Jiveros ? Me, I don’t like this 
scairt-cat stuff. Wade into ’em and blow ’em 
wide open if they git sassy; that’s my idea.” 

“Same here, if it would get us anything,” re¬ 
plied Knowlton. “But until we find something 
worth fighting over, what’s the use? Use your 
head a little if you want to keep it on your 
neck.” 

“Grrrumph!” growled Tim. But his hand 
ent now to his paddle, not to his tobacco. “No 
$e bangin’ round here. Le’s go.” 

And, after another look around, they went: 


FOLLOWED 


141 


slowly, stealthily, with open cartridge boxes be¬ 
side them and rifles close at hand, but steadily 
forging on up the forbidden water toward what¬ 
ever lay beyond. 

Though they now were afloat once more, they 
tacitly held to the same formation in which they 
had traveled the trail that morning: Jose in the 
lead, with Rand following in the bow of Tim’s 
canoe, and the pair of ex-officers trailing. The 
two jungle veterans thus were where their keen 
senses were of most use, while the rest of the 
expedition was in position for quick action to¬ 
ward front or rear. Yet, for all their readiness, 
there seemed to be nothing to do but the ever¬ 
lasting paddling. Since the passing of that sinis¬ 
ter rustle in the western bush no sight or sound 
of anything but animal or bird life had come 
to them. 

As they went, the sharp eyes of McKay dwelt 
thoughtfully on Rand. He was pushing his pad¬ 
dle as stoically as ever, and to all appearances 
his stroke was as strong as if he had had both 
legs curled under him. But the captain knew 
well that the lacerated limb was aching, and that 
the forced journeys through the tangled forest 
had pulled the torn muscles apart and undone 
whatever good had been accomplished by the 
first rough-and-ready surgical attention. 

He knew, too^ that unless the claw wounds 
were given a fair chance to heal there would 
be a cripple in his company for many days to 


TIGER RIVER 


142 

come; and that the day might not be far off 
when, notwithstanding his dogged grit, that crip¬ 
ple’s inability to handle himself with his normal 
ease might plunge the whole party into irretriev¬ 
able disaster. Humanitarian reasons aside, it 
was imperative that the weak link in the chain 
be made strong again. Rand must lie up. 

But he could not lie up in the moving canoe. 
Not only would this throw all the work of propel¬ 
ling that dugout on Tim, but if a real mal-paso 
should be encountered he would have to take to 
his legs with the rest while the boats were 
dragged and poled upward. Moreover, another 
band of savages using that hidden trail—or per¬ 
haps the same band returning—might at any 
time see and attack the expedition. Finally, the 
stubborn pride of the man himself would not let 
him rest unless the others also halted. Where¬ 
fore the only solution was to find a covert where 
a secret camp could be constructed and all hands 
could take a few days of ease. 

So, saying nothing, the commander renewed 
his study of the slowly passing shores. Now and 
then he halted his paddle and scrutinized some 
indentation or dried-up brook mouth; but only 
for a minute. The canoes crawled on for some 
distance before he saw what he sought. 

Then, on the eastern shore, a fair-sized creek 
opened. After a quick survey McKay spoke to 
Knowlton, and the canoe surged ahead at double 
speed, closing in on Jose. 


FOLLOWED 


143 


“Think we’ll look at that creek,” said the 
captain. “First, take another look at the trail— 
see if it’s still there. Then hunt for another on 
the other shore.” 

The Peruvian swung his bow inward, picked a 
landing spot, and slipped away among the leaves. 
Rand’s eyes followed him. Knowlton’s turned to 
McKay with a look of inquiry. The captain 
rolled a thumb toward Rand’s back, then touched 
his own leg. The blond man’s quick nod showed 
that his thoughts had been traveling in the same 
channel. 

Jose returned, reporting that the path still 
ran beside the water and that it showed no sign 
of use since the Jiveros had gone downstream. 
At once the canoes crossed and entered the 
creek. There Jose disappeared for a longer 
time, exploring the shores of the new stream. 
At length he stepped out of the tangle with 
news. 

“There is no path here, at least near the 
water,” he declared. “And this water is no real 
creek. It is only the outlet of a lago—how big 
I do not know, but only a little way up.” 

“All right. Let’s inspect it.” 

The black eyes of the outlaw hung on the 
gray ones a moment, mutely puzzled. Rut he 
asked no question. Into his short craft he got, 
and up along the almost motionless arm of water 
he led the way. Fie knew his capitan well enough 
to realize that this was no thoughtless waste of 


144 


TIGER RIVER 


time and effort. Tim and Rand, too, wondered 
but held their tongues. 

The waterway curved from northeast to 
north, cutting off all view of the Tigre Yacu. 
Only a few hundred yards from the river it 
opened into a lake, perhaps a mile long, rimmed 
with wide sandy shores from which rose stiff 
slopes of heavy timber. Nowhere on its placid 
bosom nor on its gleaming sands showed any 
sign of humanity. 

“Will do,” McKay asserted. 

“For what?” demanded Rand. 

“For a hangout,” enlightened Knowlton. 

“What’s the big idea?” Tim wanted to know. 

“Here you can smoke,” said McKay, his face 
relaxing. 

“Huh ? Say, I’ll do that li’l’ thing right now!” 
And in three-fifths of a second the tobacco- 
hungry paddler’s pouch was in service. 

“We’ll lie up here a few days,” McKay went 
on. “A little rest will do us all good.” 

“And that ain’t no lie,” affirmed Tim. “But 
what makes ye so merciful all to once? Got 
religion or somethin’ ?” 

“Look here, Rod, am I holding the gang 
back?” Rand sharply asked. “If that’s your 
idea I won’t-” 

“Yes, you will,” McKay coolly contradicted. 
“You’ll stick with the gang, and the gang halts 
here.” 

“But-” 




FOLLOWED 


145 


“No argument, Dave. Your leg’s bad. It’s 
got to get well as fast as possible. We want no 
lame ducks. You’ve got to lie up.” 

“And eat up all our grub-—” 

“We’ll get more grub here. Turn the little 
twenty-two gun loose on monkeys, jerk the meat, 
save our canned stuff. May lay in a stock of 
fish, too. There’s plenty of salt.” 

“Si,” Jose approved, scanning the sandy 
shores. “And this sand should be full of turtle 
eggs. The water must hold many fish. Those 
heavy woods beyond will mean easy hunting and 
good hiding. You could not have chosen a bet¬ 
ter place, capitan.” 

Rand’s mouth remained set, but he was 
silenced. Tim, with a sidelong wink at Knowl- 
ton, shoved on his paddle, and the Rand-Ryan 
boat moved onward. After a few more strokes 
from the stern, Rand began to ply his own blade. 

A little way down, on the right shore, a sandy 
spit ran out into the water. Beyond it the five 
found a small cove. There they ran the canoes 
aground, and Jose and Tim were first to debark. 

Jose, as scout, stepped off across the sand to¬ 
ward the steep bluff which, in the wet season, evi¬ 
dently formed the rim of the lake, but which now 
was some fifty yards distant. But he did not step 
far. All at once he bounded into the air, whirling 
like a cat, and ran for the lake. Knee-deep in 
the water he stopped, spluttering a hodgepodge 
of Spanish, Indian, and English profanity. 



146 


TIGER RIVER 


“What the-” Tim began. Then he 

sharply picked up one booted foot, hopped off 
the other as if stung, caught his balance, and 
rushed to join Jose. 

“Holy sufferin’ cats!’’ he blurted. “This is 
some swell place ye picked out, cap! Ouch! 
Oo-ee! Cripes, I bet me boots are gone!” 

The three still in the boats stared up the sand. 
From it radiated intense heat, but nothing moved 
on it. 

“What’s the matter?” demanded Kn owl ton. 

“Matter! Git ashore and ye’ll find out! 
That there stuff ain’t jest sand. It’s the top lid 
o’ hell!” 

“Oh. Hot, eh?” 

“Hot! Aw, no. Git out and set down on it 
a few minutes, looey. G’wan! Ye dassn’t!” 

“You’re right. I dassn’t,” grinned the lieu¬ 
tenant. “Sorry, Jose. You must have caught it 
badly with no boots on.” 

Jose, with lurid emphasis, assured him that 
he was burned to the bones. But after the water 
had cooled his suffering feet he flashed a grin. 

“I wish, amigos, I had my Moyobambino pet 
here now,” he chuckled. “I would ride on his 
back. How he would prance ! Hah!” 

“Mebbe he’s dead already, and them hundred 
thousand friends o’ his have lit extrv bonfires to 
welcome him,” suggested Tim. “Anyways, this 
sure is the top crust of his winter home. Me, 
I’m goin’ somewheres else.” 



FOLLOWED 


147 


He wallowed into his canoe, where he stared 
at his boots as if astonished to find them still on 
his feet. Jose also tugged his bow off the sand 
and stepped in. 

“It is the sun,” he explained. “On a cloudy 
day, or in the morning, one could walk here 
without trouble; but not now. All sand soaks 
up sun heat, but some sand is worse, and this is 
the worst I ever met. If we stay in this place 
we must find a shorter way to the trees. There 
is one, on the other side. See.” 

Following his pointing finger, the rest saw a 
spot where a deep indentation gave a water path 
to within a few yards of the tree growth. Push¬ 
ing out, they passed over to it. The water 
shoaled to finger depth at a distance of ten feet 
or more from the edge of the beach, making a 
poor landing, but the space of hot sand interven¬ 
ing was so short that, with boots wet, it could be 
traversed without much discomfort. So there 
they debarked. 

McKay and Knowlton loped across the sand 
to the bush, arriving with feet hot but not pain¬ 
ful. A short scout revealed nothing but animal 
sign. Returning, they brought strips of flexible 
but tough bark and some bush-cord, which they 
presented to Jose. The Peruvian, sitting in the 
water, fell to work binding the bark to his feet 
as protective coverings to his tender soles. Tim 
and Rand, after a thorough soaking of their 
boots, made a quick trip arm-in-arm across the 


TIGER RIVER 


148 

hot space. Then Tim returned, picking up his 
feet with unusual spryness. 

Half an hour later a camp had been made at 
a little distance from the entry cove and skillfully 
camouflaged with big leaves, and to it all the 
outfit except the canoes themselves was trans¬ 
ported. Later on, when the sand could be crossed 
with impunity, the boats would be shifted to a 
better berth; but now they were left stranded 
in the shallows. Rand’s leg was dressed anew 
by Knowlton, who was more deft at such work 
than the others, and he lay in his hammock, 
solacing himself with a cigarette. 

Then, all at once, the hand holding the cigar¬ 
ette stopped in air. Into his face came that look 
of concentrated listening. Jose, too, turned from 
something he was doing and cocked an ear to¬ 
ward the river. The others glanced at one an¬ 
other and stood motionless. 

The Peruvian shot a look at Rand. Then he 
picked up his gun and vanished among the trees. 
To the waiting four presently came a sound—a 
swishing, pelting sound which grew into a mur¬ 
mur, as if men were running and breathing in 
hoarse gasps. 

A sudden nearer rustle, and Jose burst out of 
the forest. 

“Peace is not for us, amigos,” he panted, with 
a hard grin. “That tribe of accursed white In¬ 
dians is coming!” 


CHAPTER XIV 


BURNING SANDS 

“AW, rats!” snorted Tim, seizing his rifle. 

/*% “There ain’t no rest for the wicked, as 
the feller/ says. Jest when we git com¬ 
fortable them guys horn in again. This ain’t 
goin’ to be no fun, either—not unless they’ve dug 
up weppins somewheres. Too much like killin’ 
sheep.” 

The other Americans, too, though swift to arm 
themselves, scowled as if facing a disagreeable 
task. Not so Jose. His pride still rankled at 
the memory of having been trapped so easily and 
driven like a beast to a mud pen, and now, finger 
on trigger, he looked vengefully back as if await¬ 
ing the appearance of the leader who had flung 
his knife so contemptuously on the dirt and in¬ 
vited him to commit suicide. 

When that leader did come loping into sight, 
however, the Peruvian stood stock still. Not 
only was the Indian weaponless and darting 
glances from side to side like a hunted thing, 
but he was followed by gasping women and 
children. 

At sight of the five whites aligned beside their 
hidden hut and the five deadly muzzles menacing 
his breast he stopped as if shot. The running 

149 


150 


TIGER RIVER 


horde behind struck him and knocked him for¬ 
ward, reeling and clutching for support. One 
hand caught a tree and saved him from sprawl¬ 
ing. He snarled something over his shoulder. 
The human herd slowed to a halt. 

For a second the women and children stared 
at the hard, bearded faces fronting them—faces 
now without a vestige of the horrible pallor and 
virulent spots which had been there that morn¬ 
ing. Then their heads turned back, and from 
them broke whimpers of terror. Behind them 
sounded the hoarse voices of their men, urging 
them on. But again the leader snarled, and in¬ 
stead of pressing forward they passed back his 
words. 

“You fools!” McKay rasped. “Why do you 
follow us?” 

“We do not follow,” the Spanish-speaking In¬ 
dian retorted. “We seek safety for our women 
and children. Death comes behind.” 

“What death?” 

“The men who shrink the head. They found 
us helpless. They follow to take our heads and 
our women. Let us pass on. Or kill us quickly, 
before they come.” 

He glanced back, but his face held no fear. 
He seemed only coolly gauging the pursuit. 
When he turned again his eyes held a malevolent 
glow, and the thin smile glimmered across his 
mouth. 

“We cannot live,” he ground out. “But you 


BURNING SANDS 


151 

who destroyed us go to death with us. Your 
heads hang with ours. Bueno!” 

Though he spoke an alien tongue, the women 
behind moaned as if they understood; as if they 
were visioning the massacre of their men and 
their own slavery. At that sound the hard-set 
faces of the five turned harder. Even Jose, 
looking at the children, clenched his teeth. 

Every man of them knew the Jiveros were in¬ 
veterate polygamists; that their killings were 
actuated even more by greed for woman slaves 
than by cupidity for the grisly trophies of war; 
that it would be more merciful to shoot down 
these women and girls now than to let them fall 
into such hands. They knew, too, that the Indian 
spoke truth when he cast on their shoulders the 
blame for the present defenselessness of his peo¬ 
ple, and that he voiced no idle threat when he 
predicted doom for all. 

“By cripes, I don’t care what happens to these 
guys—they would have killed Dave,” Tim 
blurted. “But the women and kids-” 

McKay’s voice cut in. 

“Do as I say and you may live. Run on a 
little way. Turn to the water and run back 
through the trees at the edge. Do not step on 
the sand until you see us at our canoes. Come 
to us there. We will fight for you. Quick! Go!” 

The other’s mouth twisted in disbelief. These 
gun bearers, who had been their prisoners, would 
fight for them? No hope of that! But, as 



TIGER RIVER 


152 

drowning men clutch at straws, he grasped at 
even that hopeless chance. As the imperative 
commands snapped in his ears and the guns sank 
he bounded forward. Automatically he obeyed 
McKay’s pointing finger, indicating the rear of 
the hut. Around the shelter he plunged, pressed 
close by the fugitives blindly following his lead. 

“Jose! Get back and watch for Jiveros!” 
barked McKay. “When you see them don’t 
shoot—run back here. Dave, hop to the canoes! 
Tim—Merry—bear a hand on these cases. 
Snap into it!” 

Without a pause to watch the passing horde 
he leaped into the hut and clutched a couple of 
heavy containers, with which he plowed toward 
the canoes. Hard on his heels came his two 
able-bodied mates, each carrying all he could 
snatch and hold. Rand, lugging the rifles, limped 
rapidly in their wake. 

Meanwhile Jose, slipping swiftly along the 
disordered column, found himself obliged to 
draw off to one side if he was to spy Jiveros in¬ 
stead of fighting his recent captors. The women 
and children, obsessed by fear, gave him hardly 
a passing glance. But the men, following behind 
in position to do their desperate best when the 
pursuers should overtake them, saw in him the 
living reason why they now were fleeing instead 
of battling their foes with gun and spear and 
bow. They did not know he was truly the man 
who had thought of destroying their fortress and 


BURNING SANDS 


153 


had put that thought into execution; if they had, 
not all the head-hunters in the jungle would have 
kept them from hurling themselves on him with 
their only weapons—bare hands or crude clubs 
wrenched from prone trees. Even as it was, the 
bold stare and mocking grin of the outlaw en¬ 
raged them to the point of striking at him if he 
came within reach. So, keeping in mind his duty, 
he gave them plenty of room and sped on to the 
rear. 

There, last of all, he found the chief, loping 
onward with frequent backward looks and grimly 
clutching a formidable tree branch. Coward 
though he might have been that morning when 
confronted by dread specters of disease, he now 
was all man, guarding the exodus of his fallen 
tribe and holding himself ready to fight and fall 
first when the relentless death behind should 
strike. And the outlaw, reading his face, ceased 
grinning and gave the ruler a friendly nod. His 
answer was a hollow-eyed glare. 

The retreating line faded away. The Peru¬ 
vian posted himself behind a tree at the edge of 
the new trail and waited. 

Back at the canoes, the Americans dropped 
their burdens and shoved the dugouts into water 
deep enough for floating. McKay glanced along 
the bank. A short distance farther on, a bush 
swayed sharply, struck by a speeding foot. The 
Indian had obeyed orders, turned, and started 
back just at the edge of the sand. 


154 


TIGER RIVER 


“Time for one more load,” the captain judged. 
“Merry and Tim, back to the hutl Dave, hold 
her ready to go. I’ll have to boss this gang.” 

The blond and the red man, with pistol hol¬ 
sters unbuttoned, raced back across the burning 
sands. They had hardly disappeared into the 
bush when the head of the Indian line broke out 
behind them. McKay beckoned imperatively. 
The leader made straight for him. 

He was halfway across the hot grit before his 
face contracted with pain. But his stride never 
wavered; he only jumped ahead like a spurred 
horse. A couple of seconds later he was ankle- 
deep in the cooling water and barking at the 
women, who had begun to cry out and hesitate 
on the scorching surface. Between the goad of 
his voice and the momentum of the following 
mass, the waverers were propelled onward into 
the shallow water lane. 

The whole column followed fast. Soon all 
the fugitives were packed together in the inlet, 
and the grim chief was forcing his way through 
to learn from the young guide why they were 
here in the open, easy prey for the impending 
attack. 

The guide had halted beside McKay and de¬ 
manded the same information. Was this a cruel 
white-man trap, calculated to destroy their last 
chance of life? He snapped the question with 
savage brevity. With equal curtness McKay 
snapped back at him the answer to the riddle. 


BURNING SANDS 


155 


Sudden hope flared in the tawny eyes watching 
his. As the chief reached him and growled a 
wrathful query he translated the white man’s talk 
into the Indian tongue. The tribal ruler, his feet 
still hot, threw a quick look at the sand, another 
at the point in the bush where the tribe had 
doubled on its trail, and a third at the water line 
stretching away. Then his hard gaze bored into 
McKay’s face. 

“You are at our backs,” he pointed out, his 
voice rough with hostile suspicion. “Your guns 
at our backs, Jiveros at our faces.” 

“I know it, you fool!” shot the captain. “I 
will do what I say. Take it or leave it. We go.” 

At that moment Knowlton and Tim came 
careening out with more cans. They jostled past, 
thumped their burdens into the canoes, and 
hopped in after them. 

“Better beat it, Rod!” called Knowlton. 

“Jose coming?” 

“Not yet, but time’s short. Where do we go 
from here?” 

“Hold up a minute.” Then, to the chief: 
“Your life or death is in your own hands. Do as 
you wish.” 

With which he shouldered his way out of the 
press, ran to his canoe, jumped in, and com¬ 
manded: “Paddle!” 

The two dugouts slid outward, leaving the 
little canoe of Jose empty and waiting. A couple 
of young bucks grabbed it. McKay dropped his 


TIGER RIVER 


156 

paddle inboard and swung- on them with rifle 
aimed. 

“Hands off!” he barked. “The man taking 
that canoe dies!” 

The guide and the chief grunted together. 
The pair lifted their hands from the canoe and 
sullenly swung toward their commanders. At 
once the chief began loping outward, feet in the 
water, at the very edge of the sand. The rest 
followed. 

At the mouth of the inlet the canoes swerved 
to the left and glided along the lake, near shore. 
At the same point the chief turned and ran on in 
the same direction. A short distance up-lake the 
boats slowed and stopped. The fugitives, fol¬ 
lowing, splashed up to them, still only ankle-deep. 
The chief halted and gave gruff orders. 

His people drew together, standing at the 
water line, facing the jungle, which seemed to 
quiver in the heat waves ascending from the in¬ 
tervening sand. Behind them the canoes crept 
up and grounded. 

“Here’s the dope,” McKay explained, “Ji- 
veros, following trail, turn at that place over 
yonder. Trail runs back along shore. But they 
see their victims out here, unarmed, helpless, 
making a last stand. Naturally they don’t loop 
back along the shore line—they come straight 
out to get these fellows. They don’t see us. Be¬ 
tween them and us are forty yards of blistering 
sand. By the time they-” 



BURNING SANDS 


i 57 


“Here’s Hozy!” Tim broke in. 

Jose was dashing at top speed from the tree 
line. He tore across the sand, bounded through 
the water, leaped in air and alighted in his canoe 
with a fierce down-drive of the legs that shot 
the craft outward and sat him down in the same 
instant. His paddle darted out and lashed the 
water in tremendous strokes even before he got 
to his knees. Thereafter he fairly lifted the boat 
along toward the waiting group. 

“Whew! Some getaway!” breathed Knowl- 
ton. “Our guests must be arriving.” 

“Get my idea?” demanded McKay. 

“Sure,” was the answering chorus. “And it’s 
a peach!” 

Jose slowed to a stop beside the rest. 

“They come, amigos,” he panted. “They 


“All right, listen a minute!” 

Swiftly the plan of battle was outlined to him. 
His face cracked in a ferocious grin. Without 
another word he scooped up extra cartridges and 
stepped over the side, knee-deep. The others 
also slipped overboard and crouched. 

To the Indian who spoke Spanish, McKay 
gave brief instructions. He grunted them rap¬ 
idly to the savages standing before the knot of 
gunmen. Barely had he finished when a mutter 
of mingled rage and fear ran down the line. 

It was swallowed up by an outbreak of exult¬ 
ant yells from the trees. Over there beyond the 



TIGER RIVER 


158 

dancing heat waves a band of painted men, naked 
but for maroon loin clouts, broke cover. All 
were light-skinned, fierce-faced, equipped with 
jungle weapons and wooden shields. They 
pointed, gesticulated, howled in gloating glee at 
the sight of the almost unarmed men and the 
huddling women and girls waiting desperately 
at the water’s edge. Their quarry was run down 
at last. Heads for the taking—women for the 
clutching—a revel of butchery and a Jivero 
holiday! 

Out upon the sand they sprinted, vying with 
one another for first blood and first slave. The 
waiting victims cast anxious glances back at their 
new allies and took heart. The white men were 
tense, ready, peering through the fringe of naked 
legs concealing them, holding their fire. 

Five—six—seven yards out—the first Jiveros 
began to bound higher and glance down at their 
feet. Ten yards—sharp grunts of startled pain 
broke from them. Twelve—fifteen—the grunts 
rose into yelps and yowls. The leaders tried to 
swerve aside. 

They collided with one another, tripped, 
stumbled, and sprawled on the burning sand. 
Then they screeched. 

An answering screech came from the water’s 
edge—a shrill scream of laughter from Jose. 
Like a flash it ran along the line of fugitives 
standing cool-footed in the water. They howled 
and roared and twittered and squeaked, man and 


BURNING SANDS 


159 


woman and child pointing derisive fingers at their 
foes. That ridicule stung more sorely even than 
the furnace below. The Jiveros, red mad with 
rage and pain, leaped forward again. 

As they came they loosed a wild volley of 
arrows. The laughter ceased abruptly. In the 
waiting line men slumped down and lay still, 
long shafts protruding from their bodies. 

“Now! Open!” roared McKay. 

The Indian leader howled the command in 
his own tongue. Before the masked battery of 
white men a gap sprang open, Indians plunging 
to right and left. Through that gap darted 
flame spurts and crackling reports. 

The foremost Jiveros, now only twenty yards 
away, sprawled again. This time they did not 
rise. 

The clatter of four breech bolts and of one 
lever action rattled out. Then another swift rip 
of gunfire, terminating in the sulphurous bang 
of Jose’s .44. Five more blood-mad slayers 
dropped on the sizzling sand. 

The rest, shocked through with sudden fear 
at finding guns belching death into them, dug in 
their heels and stopped. But they could not stop 
long. The burning pain at their feet bit deeper. 
And in the instant of their pause the guns spat a 
third time. 

The soft thumps of more bodies striking earth, 
the intolerable torment under foot, the swift 
realization that water and relief and their 


i6o 


TIGER RIVER 


enemies all were nearer now than the trees, 
stabbed the killers into final fierce attack. 
Frothing, screeching, the survivors jumped 
ahead, throwing spears and whirling war clubs. 
In another crash of flame and smoke five more 
of them pitched headlong and died. 

One more clatter—one more rip and bang— 
then the gunmen sprang up, reaching for their 
pistols. The last five Jiveros of the thirty-strong 
band were almost upon them. 

But the hand-guns remained silent. In a sud¬ 
den pounce the men of the white Indians hurled 
themselves on the remnant of their foes. With¬ 
out a signal, without plan, without reason except 
the simultaneous primal impulse to avenge them¬ 
selves on the merciless creatures who had har¬ 
ried them through the jungle and who now were 
within arm’s length, the men who had just been 
the hunted became the killers. With tree-branch 
club, with fist and nail and tooth, they battered 
and tore those last Jiveros into mangled pulp. 

The burning sands, only a moment ago alive 
with charging head-hunters, now were belted 
from bank to water with contorted bodies. Along 
that hot lane of death nothing moved. The 
Jivero band was wiped out. 


CHAPTER XV 

JOSE TAKES A CHANCE 

T HE white men, watching the ferocious an¬ 
nihilation of the few remaining warriors, 
backed away and reloaded their rifles. 
“A wolf pack,” McKay warned. “Look out 
they don’t turn on us. Get aboard.” 

A wolf pack it seemed, indeed, when it drew 
away from the corpses it had made from fighting 
men. Gashed, bruised, bloodied by the last des¬ 
perate thrusts and blows of the head-hunters 
and by injuries inflicted on one another in the 
savage melee, it glared hotly around as if seek¬ 
ing fresh objects on which to vent its fury. But, 
now that it had made its kill, the pack speedily 
cooled. Perhaps the steady stare of the white 
men and the silent menace of ready rifle muzzles 
peering over the canoe gunwales aided the 
cooling. 

For a long, quiet minute savage and civilized 
men looked one another in the eye. Then the 
chief stepped forward, harsh, grim, barbaric, 
streaked with red from a deep slash down one 
cheek, but holding up a friendly hand. In tones 
far more mellow than the whites had heard from 
him heretofore, he spoke at some length. As he 
finished, he waved a hand toward the women. 

161 


TIGER RIVER 


162 

McKay made a sign of incomprehension. The 
chief looked about, seeking his interpreter. 
With the same thought in mind, the Americans 
also searched faces. Then Tim pointed. 

“Tough luck,” he said. “We’ll never know 
what this guy’s tryin’ to tell us. Lookit there.” 

Huddled in the shallow water lay the chief’s 
right-hand man: the only one in his tribe who 
could speak Spanish. Through his throat, and 
out from the back of his neck, jutted a Jivero 
spear. 

With a sudden unintelligible sound, the chief 
sprang toward that motionless figure. Dropping 
on one knee, he turned the face upward. De¬ 
spite the unmistakable deadliness of the wound, 
he seemed loath to believe that the younger man 
was not still alive. Presently, however, he 
slowly arose and stood staring out across the 
water as if unseeing. When he turned back 
to his people his face was seamed with new 
lines. 

Jose, watching, felt a sudden twinge of sym¬ 
pathy. Between those two must have existed a 
closer bond than that of chief and subject. 

“Hijo?” he asked. 

The somber Indian gave no sign that he heard. 
McKay, who had picked up a few words of the 
Quichua tongue in the Andes, repeated the ques¬ 
tion in that language. 

“Churi? Son?” 

The hollow eyes turned to his. 


JO~L TAKA- 163 

u Zapai churi,” he croaked. “My only son.” 

The captain nodded and strove to express 
condolence; but the effort was fruitless, for the 
requisite Quichua was not in his vocabulary. The 
chief, however, seemed to understand. He spoke 
again, a short sentence in which McKay recog¬ 
nized the words “iscun” and “ushushi,” and 
motioned again toward the women, a number of 
whom now stood staring sorrowfully at the dead 
guide. 

“Chief has nine daughters,” he translated. 
“But his only son is dead. Too bad. I rather 
liked that young chap. Well, we may as well go 
back to camp and get the rest of our stuff. May 
be more Jiveros along later.” 

“Not unless another band is out,” Jose dis¬ 
agreed. “None of these escaped.” 

“Sure?” 

“Certain, capitan. I made it my task to 
watch those nearest the bush and to shoot some 
who tried to turn back. There is none to carry 
news of us.” 

“Good head!” Knowlton complimented. 
“You’re a cool one, Jose. Well, Rod, I don’t 
see any necessity for abandoning our camp. 
These chaps aren’t likely to bother us after what 
we’ve done for them, even if we did burn their 
house a while ago. Tell ’em to beat it, and 
we’ll resume housekeeping in our new jungle- 
bungle-o.” 

McKay considered. The white Indians, who 


TIGER RIVER 


164 

now owed their lives to them, were hardly to be 
regarded longer as enemies. Moreover, even if 
devoid of gratitude they would not be so sense¬ 
less as to attempt an attack on the riflemen 
whose prowess now was ineradicably fixed in 
their memories. Rand’s leg, too, must be worse 
than ever by this time. And they needed the 
jerked meat they had planned to get. 

“All right. But we’ll have to shift camp,” he 
compromised. “Plain trail leads to it now, 
thanks to the feet of this gang. We’ll go back 
there for the present. After we’ve shooed these 
people out we’ll make another camp farther 
along.” 

The three canoes floated backward, turned, 
and journeyed to the inlet. More slowly, the 
Indians came swashing behind, a long stoical file, 
the women watching the gliding dugouts of the 
bearded outlanders, and the men carrying the 
bodies of their fellows who had gone down be¬ 
fore Jivero arrow or spear. 

The end of the homeless procession passed 
the spot where sprawled the disfigured bodies 
of the head-hunters last to die. It receded down 
the edge of the scorching sand which had slowed 
the enemy attack and aided the straight-shooting 
whites to annihilate the assailants. Then through 
the heat quivering over the battlefield came a 
swift rush of wings. On the motionless Jiveros 
settled the black army of the upper air, which 
had been gathering from the four quarters since 


JOSE 1 KES CHANGE 165 

the first rifle voile h now fixed rending 

beak and talon in 

Again the cano grounded at the shallow end 
of the water lane. Jose hopped out, thought¬ 
fully watched the approaching horde, glanced at 
the stretch of sand, and spoke. 

“Halt them here, capitan. They move slowly 
with their dead; and the feet of the young are 
tender.” 

While the others looked puzzled, he sprinted 
across the hot space and was gone among the 
trees. Then from the bush came sounds of a 
chopping machete. 

“Huh! Funny sort of a galoot, ain’t he?” 
queried Tim. “He’s goin’ to bridge over this 
sand, I bet, to save the tootsies o’ them women 
and kids. And yet he don’t think no more o’ 
killin’ and maulin’ men than o’ smokin’ a cig¬ 
arette. Dangerous as a tiger cat one minute 
and gentle as a woman—a good woman— 
the next. Me, I’d let ’em blister every foot 
in the crowd before I’d bother meself to help 
’em out.” 

With which he belied his own words by legging 
it across the furnace to aid Jose. 

By the time the chief reached the halting place 
the pair were emerging with great armfuls of 
poles and long palm leaves, with which they rap¬ 
idly threw a path of comparative comfort across 
to the head of the inlet. 

“Women and kids first!” commanded Tim. 


166 TIGER RIVER 

“This stuff’ll shrivel up in no time. Come on, 
make it fast!” 

So, after the chief caught the idea and gave 
his orders, the weaker ones of the tribe 
scampered along the green lane, which already 
was curling up in the heat. After them the body 
bearers strode heavily. The men behind got 
across as best as they could, for no more leaves 
were put down for them. Last came the Ameri¬ 
cans, Rand trying not to limp, and the other two 
carrying ammunition cases. 

Back to the camp trudged the whites. And 
back to the camp the whole homeless tribe flocked 
with them. For a minute or two, before giving 
further attention to the Indians, the adventurers 
were busy glancing over the effects which they 
had been compelled to leave behind. 

“Jiveros found this place, all right,” com¬ 
mented Rand. “See how the stuff’s been pawed 
over? But nothing’s gone. They figured on 
looting the shack on their way back with the 
heads and slaves.” 

“Prob’ly figgered to find our trail, too, after 
they cleaned up these folks, and git some white- 
man ornaments,” agreed Tim. “But say, cap, 
what are these guys hangin’ round for? If they 
think we’re goin’ to feed ’em and build a new 
house for ’em they better think again.” 

It was quite evident that the white Indians 
wanted something; or, at least, that their chief 
did. Fie stood before the hut, grave eyes on the 


JOSE TAKES A CHANCE 167 

bearded men, obviously awaiting a chance to 
speak. McKay turned to him and pointed to¬ 
ward the river in a plain gesture of dismissal. 
But the chief made no move. He looked calmly 
into each alien face in turn. Then, in monotone, 
he talked. 

What he said the five did not understand. 
The chief, seeing their blank expressions, seemed 
to repeat. He pointed solemnly down at his dead 
son. He pointed toward the women. He waved 
a hand along the line of white men. Several 
times he reiterated two words: “Churi chascai.” 

McKay, frowning, fingered his jaw in 
perplexity. 

“Don’t get you,” he confessed. “Only word 
I understand is ‘churi’—son. Anybody know 
what ‘churi chascai’ is?” 

Nobody did. But Tim was, as usual, willing 
to take a chance. 

“Mebbe ‘chascai’ is a gun,” he hazarded. 
“We got guns. Mebbe he’s tryin’ to tell us 
we’re sons-o’-guns. That might be a big com¬ 
pliment in his lingo.” 

Ludicrous as the suggestion was, nobody 
snickered. Tim, testing out his wild guess, held 
up his rifle and raised his brows. The chief 
looked bewildered, then made a sign of negation 
and patiently began repeating his talk. 

“That lets me out,” confessed Tim. “Dave, 
try the ol’ boy with some o’ yer Javary cannibal 
talk. Mebbe he’ll understand that.” 


168 


TIGER RIVER 


But the tribal ruler, listening to a series of mo¬ 
notonous gutturals from the lips of the former 
Wild Dog, showed no comprehension. 

“Wish we had a Quichua vocabulary along,” 
Knowlton regretted. “The old fellow wants 
something and intends to get it, and he evidently 
can talk some Quichua, though I don’t believe 
it’s his usual language.” 

“Perhaps he knows the Tupi tongue spoken by 
the Amazonian Indians down below,” suggested 
Jose. “I can speak it, though not well. And I 
know some Zaparo words also. Let us see.” 
To the chief he spoke two words: “Herayi? 
Niato?” 

This time the chief understood. 

“Niato,” he repeated, nodding down at his 
son’s body. “Noqui cunian.” 

“Ah,” said Jose. “He speaks the Zaparo, but 
not the Tupi. He has just said in Zaparo what 
he said before in Quichua: ‘Son. My only son.’ 
Perhaps I can learn-” 

The chief interrupted. With another slow 
wave toward the white men and then toward the 
women, he said: “Acamia.” 

Tose started. 

“Acamia?” he repeated incredulously, point¬ 
ing to himself. “But no!” 

The Indian nodded firmly. He pointed at the 
outlaw, then at each of the Americans in turn. 
While Jose still stared, he spoke five words. 
Slowly, shyly, five maidens came forward and 



JOSE TAKES A CHANCE 169 

stood beside him; graceful, handsome girls, 
shapely, dark-eyed, smiling a little, coy but con¬ 
scious of their charms. 

“Gee!” muttered Tim. “Look who’s here! 
Funny I didn’t see them liT queens before. I 
must be gittin’ nearsighted or somethin’.” 

Wherewith he gave the little bevy a wide grin. 
Five perfect sets of teeth flashed a response. But, 
as the maidens let their deep eyes stray along the 
other American faces, their smiles faded. Knowl- 
ton’s blond-bearded face was unresponsive, 
Rand’s dark-haired jaw was impassive, and Mc¬ 
Kay’s black-whiskered countenance was cold. 

“Acamia?” muttered the captain. “I don’t 
know Zaparo, but I’ll bet I know what ‘acamia’ 
means.” 

“What?” queried Knowlton. 

“Wait and see.” 

Jose, recovering himself, pointed to the ground 
and squatted. The chief sank down into position 
for lengthy conference. Whereafter, by words 
and signs frequently repeated, with pauses and 
puzzlings and new starts, a laborious process of 
exchanging ideas proceeded. 

After a time the three able-bodied Americans 
stirred. 

“Looks like a protracted powwow,” said 
Knowlton. “We’d better be making ourselves 
useful as well as ornamental. Some of our cans 
are still broiling out yonder, and time’s getting 
away.” 


170 


TIGER RIVER 


“Right,” the captain agreed. “Dave, keep on 
sitting in your hammock and twiddling your gun. 
We’ll finish our moving.” 

Leaving their rifles with Rand, they returned 
to the canoes and loaded themselves with the hot 
tins. Neither going nor returning did one of 
them speak a word, though Tim broke into sud¬ 
den chuckles at times. Though none was posi¬ 
tive, each had a strong suspicion regarding the 
subject of the conference—a surmise amounting 
almost to knowledge. 

Back at the camp they coolly busied themselves 
with preparations for moving farther along, as 
McKay had intended. The Indians, standing 
about in aboriginal patience, watched them and 
gave ear to the progress of the difficult conver¬ 
sation between chief and outlaw. The five girls 
smiled no more, but soberly contemplated the 
dead younger chief, lifting their gaze now and 
then to see what the bearded men were about. 

At length Jose and the tribal ruler arose. 

“Comrades,” the outlaw announced with a 
grin, “the words ‘churi chascai’ and ‘acamia’ are 
not the same, but they mean the same thing to us 
now. The chief who yesterday wanted us for 
victims now wants us as—acamia. And the Za- 
paro word ‘acamia’ means ‘son-by-marriage’!” 

He paused dramatically. The Americans only 
nodded slightly, as if they had known it all the 
time. 

“Behold, amigos, our brides I” 


JOSE TAKES A CHANCE 171 

With a mock-courtly gesture he indicated the 
five jungle beauties. His partners complied, be¬ 
held, and looked back at him without facial 
change. 

“Por Dios!” sputtered the exasperated Latin. 
“Are you sticks? Have you no eyes—no hearts 
—no bowels—no-” 

“We got plenty o’ guts, feller, and we ain’t 
blind,” retorted Tim. “But tell us somethin’ 
new. We knowed that an hour ago.” 

“Si? And you knew also that these are the 
highest and most beautiful maidens of the tribe— 
the handsomest daughters of the chief himself?” 

Eyes opened at this. Jose, having scored a 
sensation at last, recovered his aplomb. 

“Si, of the chief!” he repeated. “So you did 
not suspect you were so greatly honored. It is 
as I say. The chief—his name is Pachac-—has 
never created a son, and says that Piatzo—the 
Great Father, or God—will give him only girls. 
So now that his only son is dead-” 

“Hold on!” expostulated Knowlton. “You’re 
stepping on your own foot. You say he can’t 
have sons, yet his only son is- 

Jose guffawed, drowning the rest. 

“Ah yes, amigo,” he laughed. “Yet it is true. 
What Piatzo would not do for Chief Pachac, a 
Spaniard did. So says Pachac himself. Years, 
ago a Spanish adventurer fell into the hands of 
Pachac—and, when Pachac was not looking, into 
the arms of one of the wives of Pachac. Where 





172 


TIGER RIVER 


the Spaniard afterward went the chief does not 
tell me, but from that wife was born this man 
who now lies dead on the ground.” 

Looking down into the Spanish face of that 
dead man, the listeners nodded. 

“That explains a lot,” said McKay. “Go on.” 

“Si. That bold, lone devil ol a Spaniard must 
have been a man after my own heart—ready for 
love even in the jaws of death—a true son of 
the Conquistadores! Hah! If we Spaniards 
were not so busy with blood and gold we could 
people the world with men—fighting men! And 
Chief Pachac knows it. 

“He has seen what kind of son that white man 
gave him. He has seen us white men kill six 
times our own number of Jiveros without wink¬ 
ing an eye. He has seen us, prisoners in a mud 
cell, outwit his whole tribe and destroy his 
power. He is no fool, Pachac. Now he will 
make us all his sons, and behind the protection 
of our guns he will make his tribe strong again, 
and through us he will become the grandfather of 
many man-children who will grow into great 
fighters against the accursed shrinkers of heads.” 

There was a pause. Pachac and his winsome 
daughters and his broken people watched the 
white men. The white men stared coolly back— 
except Tim, who grinned and finally laughed 
outright. 

“Gripes, if this ain’t the limit!” he gurgled. 
“Ol’ Lady Fate is sure a funny ol’ skate: throws 


173 


JOSE TAKES A CHANCE 

ye into the fryin’-pan and then lets ye hop out 
into a basket o’ peaches. And if ye gobble the 
peaches, like as not they sour on yer stummick.” 

McKay’s mouth twitched. 

“True. Especially the last part. Jose, we’re 
highly honored and so on, but we’re here for 
gold, not girls. Tell the chief to trot along 
home.” 

“Madre de Dios! You refuse?” 

“Speaking for Roderick McKay, I do. Every 
man can make his own choice.” 

“The gang sticks together,” seconded 
Knowlton. 

“But, capitan—amigos—comrades! These 
are no dirty brown women—their skins are fairer 
than our own tanned hides! And if you have no 
fire in your veins, think of the gold! By joining 
the tribe we increase our own power. When they 
are strong again we lead them into the cordil¬ 
lera. We go with fighting men of the jungle 
behind us-” 

“And then what?” demanded the captain. 

“We find the gold, and then-” 

“That’s it. Then?” 

Jose cogitated. 

“I see. You senores are of North America. 
With gold, you return to your own land. You 
are not outlaws, like me, with no land to call 
home. To go, you must abandon your new 
wives. You would not. So you will ha,ve no 
wives. You will be free. I see.” 




174 


TIGER RIVER 


His black eyes dwelt on his fighting mates, 
then on the handsome girls. His head tilted, 
and a reckless smile grew on his face. 

“You all refuse these girls?” he demanded. 

Four nods answered. 

“But you stay here until Sehor Dave is strong 
and you have shot and cured much meat?” 

“Unless we have to move.” 

“If these people will be your friends you will 
not drive them from you?” 

“Certainly not.” 

“Bueno!” 

With that devil-may-care smile still stretching 
his mouth, he turned to Pachac. Another con¬ 
ference ensued. At length the chief, after a 
dubious pause, consented to something. 

The girls looked startled. Then their teeth 
flashed again. But this time the smiles were not 
for Tim or his countrymen. They were for Jose. 

And Jose, with swaggering stride, stepped 
among them. He slipped sinewy arms over the 
two nearest pairs of shapely shoulders, drew the 
giggling girls masterfully to him, and grinned 
diabolically at the four “sticks” from North 
America. 

“Gracias!” he mocked. “As you have said, 
capitan, every man makes his own choice. Since 
you scorn these little tigresses of the Tigre Yacu, 
I take them all!” 


CHAPTER XVI 

THREE PASS OUT 


“A LL right, old-timer,” said Knowlton. 
“Sorry to lose you, but we wish you 
luck.” 

“I am not so easily lost, senor,” Jose laughed. 
“Remember that I started up this Tigre Yacu 
before you did. And do not think that because 
I have paused I have stopped.” 

McKay’s jaw set. N 

“Meaning that yo*u don’t intend, to stick by 
what you’ve done?” he snapped. “If you only 
expect to amuse yourself a few days and then 
desert these girls, you’ve stopped for good, as 
far as we’re concerned.” 

The outlaw jerked his arms from their soft 
resting places and stepped forward. 

“Capitan, have care!” he warned. “I am not 
without honor. I abide by what I have done. I 
do not desert my brides. But I do not desert my 
quest. Nor do I desert my friends—so long as 
they are my friends.” 

Eyes narrowed to slits, he watched McKay’s 
grim face a moment. Then, getting no answer, 
he went on, his voice turning harsh. 

“No man who calls me traitor—no man who 
even thinks me traitor—can be friend of mine. 

*75 


TIGER RIVER 


176 

No man, friend or enemy, can tell me what I 
shall or shall not do. If you do not want me 
with you longer, go your way—and the devil 
go with you! But I have not stopped. Hah! 
No! And I have yet to see the man who can 
stop me!” 

A flush shot across McKay’s face. Perhaps 
he had wronged Jose; but the outlaw’s volcanic 
retort was too hot to pass unchallenged. He 
stepped forward. Jose instantly stepped to meet 
him. 

Rand’s voice, cold as a knife-edge, came be¬ 
tween them. 

“Cut it out!” he drawled. “You’re both 
wrong. Going to fight like a couple of fools? 
You make me sick.” 

Both slowed. Another step, and they paused. 
Behind Jose the Indians stirred and looked at 
their chief. Behind McKay the Americans let 
their hands sink to their holsters. 

“Yeah,” rumbled Tim. “What’s the matter 
with ye? Hozy, lay off cap or ye’ll git all that’s 
cornin’ to ye. Cap, jump Hozy and ye jump the 
whole tribe—he belongs to ’em now. They’re 
scrappers. Remember what they done to them 
last Jiveros. Want to start another war before 
our guns git cooled off?” 

Common sense gripped both belligerents. 
They fronted each other, eye to eye, but each 
saw in the other’s face realization that he had 
spoken too hastily. 


THREE PASS OUT 


177 


“My fault, Jose,” McKay coldly apologized. 
“I misunderstood.” 

“Es culpa mia,” was the chill reply. “The 
fault is mine.” 

“Good enough. Now you’re both right,” 
came Rand’s caustic comment. “Let it go at 
that.” 

But, though the sudden gulf yawning between 
the two men had closed, a split still existed: not 
only between the captain and the outlaw but be¬ 
tween Indians and whites. Standing solidly be¬ 
hind their chief, ready to back him in anything he 
did, the men of the jungle now were also solidly 
behind the new son of Pachac. The Americans 
were as doggedly loyal to their own leader, right 
or wrong. What might have become a har¬ 
monious alliance, even despite the refusal of the 
northerners to accept membership in the tribe, 
now was merely a mutual tolerance. Saxon 
pride and Spanish pride left the gap unbridged— 
with Jose on the other side. 

Now the Peruvian, ignoring McKay, somberly 
eyed the three men in the hut. With resolute 
tread he strode forward, picked up his gun lean¬ 
ing against a corner post, gathered his meager 
personal belongings under his left arm, and 
stalked out. 

“Senores,” he stated with formal politeness, 
“it is a matter of regret to me that our com¬ 
panionship ends. It is not by my choice that 
it does end. But for the slur of your capitan it 


TIGER RIVER 


178 

would not now be ended. My intention was— 
but that does not matter. To you, Senor Knowl- 
ton—Senor Rand—my old friend Tim—I wish 
all success. If at any time Jose Martinez, the 
vile outlaw and deserter of women, can be of any 
aid to you three, do not hesitate to call. Adios!” 

Turning his back squarely on McKay, he 
faced the men of Pachac and extended his gun 
arm toward the back trail. Pachac himself led 
off. The line began to move. 

Silently the white men watched them go: the 
barbaric chief, still gripping his crude blood¬ 
stained club, belted with his sinister black hair- 
girdle, followed by men bearing the corpse of 
his half son; the naked, muscular warriors, some 
carrying the other bodies of their slain; the fair¬ 
skinned daughters of the chief, looking wistfully 
back at the motionless Jose but asking no ques¬ 
tions ; the other women, some young and robust, 
some carrying babes on their backs, some bent 
from age and work; the children, stoical as their 
elders. On into the dim shadows they filed, 
heading back toward the desolate clearing where 
the remnants of their plantation would yield 
them scant food. Then Jose moved. 

Down the bank toward his little canoe he 
started without a backward look. McKay, cold 
and straight, still stood where he had stopped 
after the mutual apology which had not restored 
friendship. From the hut behind him came no 
sound. But he felt three pairs of eyes on his un- 


THREE PASS OUT 


179 

compromising back—eyes whose combined 
weight of disapproval hung heavy on him. 

“Jose!” he called. 

Jose went stonily on. He faded among the 
trees. He was gone. 

“And there,” said Tim, morosely, “goes the 
feller that let us in on this trip. The feller that 
tipped us off to the gold when we didn’t know 
there was any up here, and would fight for us 
till the last dog died, as long’s we didn’t kick him 
in that sore pride o’ his.” 

McKay faced about. The three pairs of eyes 
now were not on him. They rested on the spot 
where the son of the Conquistadores had dis¬ 
appeared; and they were grave. 

“My fault,” he conceded again. “But he’s 
gone. There’s nothing we can do now but move 
camp as we intended. I’ll scout around.” 

Rifle in hand, he went out alone into the bush, 
Knowlton hesitated, frowning at the forest; then 
grabbed his own gun and followed him. 

“Always together, them two,” said Tim. 
“Merry wants to give cap a swift kick, but he 
trails along jest the same. Dang it, Dave, cap’s 
too sudden sometimes. No need to jump in 
Hozy’s face with both feet like that. What’s it 
to him what Hozy does? Me, I think Hozy’s 
one wise guy.” 

Rand smiled slightly. 

“Why didn’t you take a couple of them your¬ 
self, then? You had your chance.” 


TIGER RIVER 


180 

“Aw, that ain’t what I mean. I can git me a 
wife up home if I want one, which I don’t. But 
lookit the thing from Hozy’s side. He’s a lone 
wolf, man without a country, too much of a he- 
man to set down in a town and git fat and bald- 
headed even if he could go back. He belongs 
in these here wild woods. Now he gits a whole 
armful o’ swell girlies handed to him, gits elected 
son of a chief and head of a bunch o’ hard guys 
that he can train into one fierce fightin’ machine 
—why wouldn’t he take it? Better be a king 
among pigs than a pig among kings, as the feller 
says. And them guys ain’t no pigs, neither. 
He’d be a sufferin’ idjut to turn it down—him, a 
man with a price on his head and no place to go. 
Ain’t it so?” 

The green-eyed man slowly nodded. 

“Sure. And what’s more, all that long con- 
flab between him and ol’ Patch-Ike wasn’t about 
girls,” Tim continued. “Hozy’s got his eyes 
skinned all the time, and while he had the chief 
goin’ he was gittin’ a lot o’ dope about somethin’. 
About what? About what’s ahead of us, most 
likely: the gold and that wheel thing the young 
feller spoke about, and what makes fellers crazy 
up here, and so on. If he didn’t git all o’ that 
he got somethin’, and he’d have shot the works 
to us if cap hadn’t gone off half-cocked. And 
now what do we know? Nothin’. And the only 
wise guy in the outfit’s gone, sore clear through. 
And I don’t blame him. Pfluh!” 


THREE PASS OUT 


181 


He spat disgustedly. Rand said nothing. He 
knew Tim. He knew the grumbling veteran 
would carry on as loyally as ever behind the cap¬ 
tain whom he now scored. He knew, too, that 
there was much truth in what Tim said. 

“And now here we are, without a guide or 
nothin’, in the middle of a howlin’ wilderness o’ 
head-hunters. If we ever git to that gold we’ll 
find li’l’ ol’ Hozy and his new gang there ahead 
of us, I bet. And I bet ye somethin’ else—one o’ 
these days, if he don’t git killed first, Hozy’ll 
make himself the big noise around here. He 
ain’t jest stoppin’ to fool round a few girls, like 
cap thought he was. He’s lookin’ way ahead, 
figgerin’ on things about ’steen jumps beyond 
where he is now. You wait and see.” 

“Hope we live to see it.” 

“Yeah. Hope Hozy lives to see it, too. Wal, 
he’s got our whole case o’ forty-fours to start 
his clean-up with, and if he gits a Jivero with 
every shot he’ll make head-hunters hard to find 
round here. And there won’t be none o’ them 
what-ye-call-’em Bambinos in Hozy’s country, 
neither. Gee, I bet the first thing he does with 
his new gang is to start ’em after that greasy 
trader that was swipin’ our stuff. Hope he gits 
him.” 

Wherein Tim erred on both counts—as he was 
to learn before dark. Neither the case of am¬ 
munition nor the trader who had attempted to 
appropriate it had gone as far as the Americans 


182 


TIGER RIVER 


supposed. Nor was Jose thinking of matters so 
trivial as a pursuit of the pair whom he had 
scared away that day. 

Down at the river he had expertly concealed 
his canoe and joined the column fording the 
stream; and now, first in the line, heading even 
the chief, he was stealing along like the jungle 
creature he was, his gun ready^ to clear from 
the path any menace to the people who had 
taken him to themselves. In his dark eyes burned 
a flame lit by thoughts known only to himself: 
thoughts not of the Americans, not of the Moyo- 
bambino, not even of his present position, but 
of the mysterious land to the north. Truly, he 
had not stopped. But even he did not realize 
that he had only just started. 

Meanwhile, McKay and Knowlton were 
threading the tangle in their silent scout. No 
word had been spoken between them concerning 
Jose, nor would anything further on that sub¬ 
ject be said for some time. In his heart the 
stiff-backed captain was rebuking himself for his 
abruptness and realizing to the full what a seri¬ 
ous loss he had brought on the expedition; but, 
even had it been possible, he would not have re¬ 
called the Peruvian now. 

Neither would he give up his purpose to go 
on into the sinister cordillera toward which he 
had set his face. Not if all his comrades turned 
back—not if he lost food and gun and clothing 
and had to attack the jungle barehanded—not so 


THREE PASS OUT 


183 

long as one inch of progress and one ounce of 
will remained in him, would he quit forcing his 
way onward. When he could go no farther he 
would go down, face still to the front and dead 
fingers clutching the ground ahead. That was 
McKay. 

At length, some distance farther along the 
lake and well back, he paused and scanned the 
ground around a small timbered knoll. Past the 
rise flowed a tiny but clear brooklet. Primeval 
solitude, unmarked by the feet of men, sur¬ 
rounded it. Game tracks were plentiful, and 
monkeys flitted along the high branches. Meat, 
water, secrecy, all were there for the taking. 
Glancing at his compass, he turned back into the 
labyrinth, working toward the lake bank. The 
present camp would be easier to find by follow¬ 
ing the top of that slope than by worming along 
the devious way he had come. 

A little later he and Knowlton emerged into 
a fresh path, showing marks of many human 
feet. It was the trail left by the people of 
Pachac and the pursuing Jiveros; the point where 
the fugitives had doubled back, and where the 
head-hunters had later plunged straight out on 
the bare sand. The ex-officers paused, stepped 
nearer to the edge, and looked out. 

The sand again was empty of life: the vul¬ 
tures had finished their work and risen. Out 
there now lay only stripped bones, fleshless skulls, 
scattered shields and spears and bows and clubs, 


TIGER RIVER 


184 

surrounded by sinister red patches. The eyes of 
the men at the top of the bank ranged out to the 
water where they had crouched and shot. They 
returned, noting the positions of the bones along 
that red trail. They glanced carelessly at the 
path left on the slope itself. Then the pair 
turned away. 

But they wheeled back. There, under a tree 
on that slope, they had seen something: some¬ 
thing hastily set down beside the path by Jiveros 
just before charging out to kill and be killed. 
Their eyes widened. Then they went down, 
picked up what they had found, and, walking 
with hands well away from their sides, resumed 
their way to camp. 

As they stopped beside the hut, up from the 
direction of the canoes came Tim, puffing under 
the weight of a tin case. 

“Say!” he panted. “Know what that proud 
fool of a Hozy done? Throwed this can o’ 
forty-fours back into our canoe. Took a few 

boxes, that’s all. The danged ol’- Huh! 

What ye got there? Cr-r-ripes!” 

The officers set down their finds. Tim’s mouth 
worked. Then the case of cartridges slipped 
from his nerveless hands. 

He was staring at the severed heads of the 
Moyobamba trader, Torribio Maldonado, and 
his Indian satellite. 



CHAPTER XVII 


NORTH 


FIRE, carefully masked, glowed faintly at 



the top of the little knoll back in the 


jungle. Dimly outlined by its vague glim¬ 
mer, the columns of near-by trees, large and 
small, rose into the upper dark and vanished 
amid grotesque lianas and great drooping leaves. 
Among them, a scant half-rod from the smolder¬ 
ing blaze, stood two straight young trunks be¬ 
tween which stretched a horizontal pole. Under 
the pole squatted four men, smoking. 

That pole was the front rafter of a carefully 
concealed hut: a hut against whose other three 
sides leaned newly cut bushes and ferns and 
whose roof-line was softened and distorted by 
cunningly spaced bumps and slants and juts of 
palm leaf; a covert which even a jungle Indian 
might have passed without seeing it, unless 
warned by the odor of smoke which permeated 
the air even when no fire burned. The smoke 
tang clung both to the soil and to close-hung 
strips of meat under the palm roof. 

No Indian was near at present. But other 
jungle prowlers, as savage and nearly as deadly, 
were restlessly moving around the camp. At 
times their fierce eyes shone beyond the fire, and 


186 


TIGER RIVER 


at other moments their snarls and growls told 
of their baffled hunger for the meat which they 
smelled beyond the men. Yet they held their 
distance, partly because of the dread fire demon 
glowering at them and partly because even their 
ferocious hearts had learned that here it was 
well to step warily. 

They had learned, those tigres, that the man 
creatures now living here, though clawless and 
gifted with no such fangs as theirs, possessed a 
deadly power: that they could suddenly spit out 
a sharp crack which struck their brothers dead. 
They had met men before, and more than one 
of those men had fallen before their rending 
attack and gone down their ravenous gullets. 
But those had not been such men as these; 
they had been bare of body, beardless of face, 
able only to stab with spear or arrow and then 
die. These new two-legged creatures not only 
would not be eaten—they killed and ate the 
tigres themselves! 

Yes, they were tiger eaters. They preferred 
other meat,- such as monkeys and birds and 
agoutis; but after they spat that flashing report 
at a jungle king they stripped his flesh from his 
bones, ate what they wanted, and salted and 
smoked the rest to add to the monkey haunches 
dangling from their roof. And so, though the 
big cats nightly slavered at the tantalizing tang 
which drew them there, they kept moving. And, 
come when they might, they never could find that 


NORTH 187 

meat unguarded or all the men asleep. Always 
one was there, alert and formidable. 

For days now the camp had stood there. For 
days three of its men had hunted in the sur¬ 
rounding tangle, killing as quietly as possible and 
bringing back their prey to the hut where the 
fourth, who was lame, sat with a gun close at 
hand. When their butcher work was done they 
had gone with the fresh meat strips to the lake 
shore, where, on frames constructed at the edge 
of the bush, they salted and dried their provender 
and then brought it back to camp for a light 
smoking. And now, thanks to skillful hunting, 
straight shooting, good luck and steady work, 
they had tough meat enough to carry them many 
a hard mile onward toward the cordillera. 

Now, also, Rand’s leg was again in condition 
for use. Careful dressing and faithful though 
tedious resting had healed the wounds to such an 
extent that now he not only could walk about but 
could even squat beside his comrades in the 
nightly smoke talk—though he squatted on only 
one heel instead of both. He was not yet in 
shape to buck a hard trail, but by favoring the 
injured leg a bit he could do his full share of 
paddle work. Moreover, he had no intention of 
lolling here longer. Already he had demanded 
that the dugouts, which now were sunk in shal¬ 
low water for concealment, be raised and loaded 
and the journey resumed. 

“Aw, don’t git so hasty,” complained Tim. 


i88 


TIGER RIVER 


“Ye’ve had it pretty soft lately, but we ain’t. 
We been pluggin’ all day, every day, gittin’ this 
here grub ready. Me, I’m willin’ to loaf a couple 
days meself now. How ’bout it, cap?” 

“Wouldn’t hurt to lie up one day, anyhow,” 
McKay agreed, mindful of the fact that the delay 
would heal Rand’s injured leg just so much more. 
“All hands rest until day after to-morrow.” 

Rand frowned, but gave no further sign of 
impatience. He puffed again on his cigarette 
and glanced at the vanishing gleam of a tiger’s 
eye in the black bush beyond. The others also 
had caught that gleam, but they made no move. 
So accustomed to the cordon of cats had they 
become that they paid little more attention to it 
than to the ever-present mosquitoes—unless the 
animals grew too aggressive. They smoked on 
in silence for a time. 

“D’ye know, I can’t git that Bambino feller’s 
head out o’ me mind,” Tim declared presently. 
“Keeps cornin’ back to me. I seen all kinds o’ 
dead men over in France, and plenty here in 
South Ameriky, too, and some of ’em was tough 
to look at, but they didn’t spoil me sleep none. 
But some way a feller’s head without no body on 
it gives me the jimmies. I didn’t like them Ji- 
veros much before, but I got no use at all for 
’em now.” 

“So say we all,” seconded Knowlton. “Still, 
there’s no reason why Maldonado should haunt 
you. You gave him a good deep burial—what 


NORTH 189 

there was of him. Wonder where the rest of 
him is.” 

“Somewheres between the river bank and the 
white Injun clearin’, most likely. If he’d kep’ on 
burnin’ the water downstream the head-hunters 
wouldn’t never have got him. If he didn’t try 
to do us dirt with the white Injuns before they 
caught us he tried it afterwards, I bet.” 

The red man’s random guess was right. His 
terror diminishing after he lost sight of the men 
whom he had sought to despoil, Maldonado had 
reflected that their fierceness and their jeering 
mirth were hardly in keeping with their ap¬ 
parently diseased condition. Tricky himself, he 
speedily suspected that he had been tricked. 
Whereupon, in a burst of vicious fury, he had 
plunged into the jungle to see if he could find the 
white Indian settlement and goad its warriors 
into pursuing the men who had mocked him. 
What might have happened to him if he had 
reached that clearing and its raging people may 
be surmised. But he never arrived there. The 
head-shrinkers spied him first. 

“Dang funny how things have been hap¬ 
penin’,” Tim went on. “Take them white In¬ 
juns, now. With the whole jungle to run into, 
they couldn’t hit no other place but our camp— 
the last place on earth they’d expect help, and 
the only place they could git it. Seems like a 
miracle.” 

“Odd, but not miraculous,” disagreed Rand. 


190 


TIGER RIVER 


“They dodged the Jiveros somehow and started 
running up the path. Then they quit the path— 
maybe waded the river a little way—to lose their 
trail. They undoubtedly know of this sandy 
lake on account of its turtle eggs and good 
hunting. Young leader thought they’d have a 
chance to escape in here, so took the chance; 
intended to hide the women and children farther 
in and then tackle the head-hunters barehanded. 
They hit our camp because it was near shore 
and they were following the lake line. Simple 
enough.” 

“Yeah, to hear you tell it. Now tell me some¬ 
thin’ else, Mister Wise Guy—where’s that swag¬ 
gerin’ rascal Hozy, and what’s he doin’ right 
now?” 

Rand shook his head. 

“Don’t ask me. I’m no oracle. But there’s a 
simple way to find out.” 

“How?” 

“Go find Jose and ask him.” 

“Huh! Gittin’ brighter every day, ain’t ye! 
But say, I dunno, at that.” 

He glanced sidewise at McKay, who stared 
expressionless into the fire. Then he turned to 
Knowlton. 

“Might do that li’l’ thing, too. Mebbe Hozy’s 
been over here lookin’ for us before now, but 
couldn’t find this new camp—we covered up our 
trail dang careful. Anyways, ’twouldn’t do no 
harm to walk over and see how he’s makin’ out 


NORTH 


191 

before we pull our freight north. What d’ye 
think, looey?” 

The lieutenant met the appeal in Tim’s eye, 
looked at McKay’s stiff neck, smiled slightly. 

“I’m game if the rest are. I’d like to know 
if the old fire-eater’s still alive.” 

“Same here,” Rand added his vote. 

A long pause followed. McKay said never a 
word. 

At length Rand arose, stepped to the fire, put 
on more wood, yawned at another eye-flash be¬ 
yond, and suggested: “I’m on first-trick guard 
duty to-night. Better hit the hay, Merry.” 

The blond man, whose night it was to keep 
vigil from midnight to dawn, agreed and 
promptly turned in. McKay, still silent, fol¬ 
lowed. Tim grinned slyly at Rand, jerked his 
head toward the obdurate captain’s back, and 
retired to his own hammock. 

“Wants to go jest as much as we do, but he’s 
too set to own up,” was his thought. “If I ever 
git rich and go back home I’m goin’ to hire one o’ 
them sculptor guys to carve me a li’l’ mule out o’ 
the hardest rock there is, and then I’ll name it 
McKay.” 

Wherewith he curled up and slept. 

Rand returned to his former place and dis¬ 
posed himself comfortably, facing the fire, cocked 
rifle now resting across his knees. Several times 
during his watch he lifted the gun part way, then 
let it sink as a menacing form swiftly dissolved 


292 


TIGER RIVER 


in the darkness. After Knowlton relieved him 
he slept tranquilly, undisturbed by any shot. 

The day of rest followed, and another night 
unbroken by gunfire. Then McKay, ending the 
second watch at dawn, roused his companions to 
a day of action. 

In the cool daybreak hour, when the sandy 
stretch between water and shore was as devoid of 
heat as the forested soil behind, the four passed 
back and forth through the mist with meat and 
cans and guns and hammocks and paddles. They 
waded into the lake, scooped from the sunken 
canoes the sand ballast holding them down, 
rocked them in the water until clean, loaded them 
up, and got aboard. Before the sands beside 
them were even warm they were gliding away, 
leaving behind only a vacant hut where the tigres 
now might enter and sniff and snarl in chagrin. 

Out to the river they swung. And there, 
though no word of Jose had been spoken for 
many hours, McKay turned his boat downstream. 

Down to the rocks where they had been cap¬ 
tured by the men of Pachac they paddled. There 
they slid the canoes under cover and worked 
through the bush fringe to the path leading to¬ 
ward the clearing where Jose might or might not 
be. But the visit to that clearing ended before 
it could begin. 

The path was beaten smooth by the passage 
of many feet. The feet had passed within forty- 
eight hours at most. The Americans moved 


NORTH 


193 


along it a little way, Rand studying the toe prints 
along the edges, the spots where some foot had 
swung a little wide. Then they stopped, looked 
at one another, and turned back toward the 
canoes. 

They knew that a journey southward to the 
clearing of Pachac’s people would be only a waste 
of time: that there they would find neither Jose 
nor his adopted brethren. They visioned the 
scene at that place as truly as if they now were 
standing at the end of the trail and gazing across 
the opening—an empty, desolate space of stumps, 
where a few ancient mud huts gaped vacantly at 
a charred ruin which had been a tribal house, 
and where the plantation at the rear was only an 
uprooted waste, despoiled of everything edible. 
The nomads who had tarried there a few months 
were there no more, and unless other wanderers 
should come and settle on the abandoned site the 
ever-encroaching jungle would steadily creep in¬ 
ward upon it until it was engulfed in a tangle of 
upshooting green. 

“Too late,” Rand laconically summarized. 
“All gone—north.” 


CHAPTER XVIII 

THE TOELESS MAN 


AT the top of a steep ravine a half squad of 
men paused, breathing hard, to mop their 
streaming faces and renew the oxygen in 
their laboring lungs. 

Below them, clear and cold, a little stream 
trickled along the gully out of which they had 
just climbed. Behind, a stiff slope dropped from 
a ridge topped by tropical timber. Ahead, a 
short rise pitched upward at a grade betokening 
another ridge and ravine beyond. And off at 
the right, only a few rods away but concealed 
from the sight of the quartet by intervening 
trees, the Tigre Yacu squirmed its way along a 
deep bowlder-choked bed. 

The four men knew it was there, but its only 
use to them now was as a guiding line. So low 
was its water level, and so choked its course with 
rocks, that it was no longer a feasible roadway 
into the hinterland. After days of paddling, 
poling, wading, shoving and dragging their 
canoes through one bad pass after another, the 
indomitable adventurers had at last been com¬ 
pelled to abandon the sturdy craft and take to 
their legs. 

Yet they had not left the dugouts lying care- 

194 


THE TOELESS MAN 


195 


lessly among the bowlders, nor even secreted 
them under the cover of low-drooping bush or 
up a cleft in the bank. The boats now were high 
and dry, yet ready for quick use. They lay at 
the top of a stiff incline, high above the present 
water level, higher even than the old stains mark¬ 
ing the topmost reach of the rainy season floods. 
It had taken nearly a whole day of strenuous 
labor to get them there, for they were stout craft 
hollowed out from solid logs, and astoundingly 
heavy. But there they were, lying on crude 
trestles, with bows somewhat lower than the 
sterns and dipping downward. In them lay the 
paddles and a number of tin cases which once 
had held oil, later had served as sealed re¬ 
ceptacles for food and ammunition, and now con¬ 
tained nothing at all. Only one of the containers 
still was heavy: the one in which remained the 
“trade” .44 bullets which the party could not use 
here but would not throw away. 

The positions and equipment of those canoes 
were significant of three things: that their 
owners might be gone for some time, but in¬ 
tended to come back; that when they did come 
they might bring something with which to refill 
the tins; and that they might wish to depart in a 
hurry. With the banks only moderately full of 
water, it would require merely a quick shove of 
the boats down the natural chute to get under 
way with the utmost speed. And the season for 
the setting in of the heavy rains was not many 


TIGER RIVER 


196 

weeks away. In fact, even now the daily showers 
seemed to last a trifle longer than had been the 
case a fortnight ago. 

Now the contents of the vacant tins, together 
with smoked meat and hammocks and other 
wilderness necessities, were dragging at the 
shoulders of the four dogged marchers. The 
men stood leaning far forward, hands on braced 
knees, distributing the weight of their packs and 
easing their shoulders as they breathed. Hard¬ 
ened though they were by paddling, and iron¬ 
muscled from their strenuous toil among the 
rocks of the upper Tigre, they were not yet 
accustomed to the unceasing strain and the 
grueling down-pull of their back burdens. And 
all knew that stiller work must await them. 

“Cripes!” wheezed Tim. “I know now what 
’tis that drives fellers crazy up this here river. 
It’s climbin’ up these blasted gullies and then 
tumblin’ down into another one a li’l’ further on. 
Up and down, up and down, and never gittin’ 
nowheres. If I ever git out o’ here and back 
to N’Yawk I won’t be able to travel natural 
on the sidewalks—I’ll have to climb up the 
sides o’ the buildin’s and then fall off the 
other side. Pflooey!” He blew a sweat drop 
from the end of his nose and again breathed 
hoarsely. 

His humorous arraignment of the country 
now surrounding them was well merited. It 
truly was an up-and-down region, gashed athwart 


V 


THE TOELESS MAN 197 

by water clefts of varying degrees of steepness, 
and steadily growing higher. 

Had he or any of his companions taken the 
time and trouble to pick out the tallest tree there¬ 
abouts and climb into its lofty crown, he would 
have seen, to east and north and west, a maze 
of jungled hilltops shouldering upward behind 
one another; and beyond, on all three sides, a 
mountain wall looming mistily against the sky 
some thirty miles away. That wall, curving 
around like the rim of a great lopsided bowl 
from which the southeastern quarter had been 
knocked away, was the mother of the hills, the 
mother of the Tigre bowlders: the Cordillera 
del Pastassa, with its clawlike eastern spur; the 
golden mountains of their dreams. 

But, though so near the unknown range to¬ 
ward which they had toiled and fought, not one 
of those pack-burdened men had yet seen it. 
Theirs was not the free outlook of the creatures 
of the tree-tops; they were earth-fettered, swal¬ 
lowed in the labyrinth, able to see only a few rods 
at most in any direction, and then seeing only the 
eternal tangle in which they seemed doomed to 
labor for all time. They were here only because 
they were stubbornly following the course of the 
shrunken river, their compasses, and a dim track 
pressed into the mold by bare human feet— 
the upstream trail which, starting somewhere 
below the abandoned white-Indian settlement, 
still ran on and on into the north and seemed, as 


TIGER RIVER 


198 

Tim said, to get nowhere. Where they were 
now they could not tell; all sense of distance, 
even of time, was distorted by their surround¬ 
ings. They only knew that if they fought on¬ 
ward long enough they must inevitably reach the 
mountains and there find—perhaps treasure, 
perhaps barrenness. 

“If we could only pick up a liT gold to kid 
ourselves along, ’twouldn’t be quite so bad,” 
Tim added. “Jest a liT nugget, or enough color 
in the pan to keep us goin’. But there ain’t 
nothin’. Seems like Hozy’s yarn about the crazy 
guy without no toes must be a dream. Yeah, oP 
Hozy himself seems like a dream now, and his 
Injuns and all. Nothin’ but jungle and work 
and bugs and sweat—that’s all the real things 
there is.” 

Again he spoke the gaunt truth. In all their 
tortuous way up the river they had found no gold 
worth keeping since that day when Tim had cap¬ 
tured the forty-dollar chunk. Though their gold 
pans and other mining tools had all been lost in 
their capture and escape from the men of Pachac, 
they had made shift to wash a little dirt from 
time to time since then. They had found color, 
but in such infinitesimal quantities as to prove a 
discouragement instead of a lure. But for three 
things they might before now have decided their 
quest to be hopeless—though they still would 
have pushed onward. 

Those three things were the nugget itself, still 


THE TOELESS MAN 199 

jealously prized by Tim; the tale of the mad 
Pardo, which they implicitly believed, though 
told by an outlaw who now was no longer a com¬ 
rade of theirs; and the fact that the narrator 
of that tale still was pressing on toward the 
cordillera. 

How far ahead of them Jose and his band 
now were they did not know, but they knew they 
were ahead, and that they had gained much 
distance over the far slower canoes of the fol¬ 
lowing whites. Traveling at the tireless pace of 
the jungle nomad, unburdened by packs, snatch¬ 
ing their sustenance from the forest where civil¬ 
ized beings would have starved, they had pressed 
steadily onward while the Americans wrestled 
their canoes up through the bowlders. Now their 
trail was old—washed dim by the daily rains, 
trampled under by the fresher tracks of animals. 
But it was there, and at long intervals the men 
following it found unmistakable signs that the 
new son of Pachac still led them. 

Those signs were few, and so small that only 
the jungle-trained eye of Rand spied them: a few 
threads caught on a thorn, which were recog¬ 
nized as torn from the Peruvian’s raveled 
shirt-sleeve or ragged breeches; an exploded 
.44 cartridge shell glinting dully at one side 
of the path; the marks of a machete blade on 
some severed sapling or vine. The three 
former soldiers, though by no means blind to 
trail signs, would not have spotted these things 


200 


TIGER RIVER 


as they labored on. But to Rand they spoke 
as plainly as if they had been printed placards 
announcing: 

“I, Jose Martinez, have passed here.” 

And soon they were to find larger and grim¬ 
mer signs of the progress of the deadly-handed 
outcast. 

Having caught their wind, the four straight¬ 
ened up. 

“Feel better, Tim, now that the hourly growl 
is out of your system?” Knowlton quizzed, in 
the low tone habitually used. 

“Oh, yeah. Le’s go, feller idjuts.” 

They fell into route step and plodded away. 

Over the ridge they filed, Rand’s eyes cease¬ 
lessly scouting ahead and aside. Down into an¬ 
other gully, up another slope. On again, down 
again, up again. And so on, as it seemed always 
to have been and destined always to be. 

Then, on an upland somewhat longer and 
more level than usual, the scout slowed. His 
head slipped forward, and he sniffed the air like 
a hunting animal. But he did not stop. His 
nose told him that whatever was ahead was 
dead. 

Just beyond the top of the hill he found it. 
It lay scattered along on both sides of the trail, 
which here led among sizable trees and com¬ 
paratively thin undergrowth. It now was noth¬ 
ing but bones. But a few days ago it had been 
a body of perhaps twenty men, who had lurked 


THE TOELESS MAN 


201 


behind the trees and attacked from ambush. 
Broken weapons, red-stained shields, splintered 
arrows jutting from tree-trunks, remnants of 
maroon loin clouts, and trampled ground bore 
mute testimony to the fierceness of the fight. 

“Tidy little scrap here,” said McKay, speak¬ 
ing for the first time in hours. 

“Pachac’s gang must be armed again—with 
clubs, anyway,” added Knowlton, indicating a 
crushed skull. 

“Yeah. And ol’ Hozy was right on the job 
as usual,” Tim chimed in. “Lookit this feller. 
And there’s another one. And a whole handful 
o’ forty-four shells scattered around.” 

The two skulls to which he pointed bore the 
gaping holes of heavy bullets. 

“Good swift action, all right,” agreed the 
lieutenant. “Must have been a grand old free- 
for-all for a few minutes. Jiveros, these fellows. 
Same equipment as the ones we sent west. Some 
must have gotten away. Remember the drums 
we’ve been hearing lately?” 

The question was hardly necessary. The 
mutter of those drums off to the west had caused 
even sharper vigilance by day and more careful 
concealment of the nightly camps. Because of 
it, no fires had been built for days. Its menac¬ 
ing note had throbbed in the mind of every man 
long after it had died out of the air. Now each 
glanced searchingly about. But nothing showed 
itself. 


202 


TIGER RIVER 


“Uh-huh. Wal, if more of ’em are out they’re 
prob’ly after Hozy’s gang, not watchin’ us,” was 
Tim’s comforting suggestion. “And they’ll 
git plenty o’ trouble if they catch up with 
’em. Lookit here, there ain’t no hair any¬ 
wheres around. 01 ’ Patch-Ike must have most 
enough scalps in that belt o’ his to make a 
whole shirt by now. If he cleans up another 
bunch o’ Jiveros he can start makin’ a pair o’ 
pants.” 

Grim smiles answered him. But the same 
thought was in each man’s mind—Pachac’s band 
must be smaller now than before this ambush. 
Was Jose leading the tribe to victory over all 
raiders, or to ultimate destruction? Or was he 
still alive and leading? This might have been 
his last fight. 

Rand hitched his pack and resumed his vigilant 
advance. The short column filed onward past 
the other relics of jungle warfare, dipped down 
into another valley, and left the battlefield be¬ 
hind. There was no further talk. 

For some time they kept on before halting 
again. Then their pause was caused, not by men 
nor beasts, but by weather. The light faded, 
a murmur of approaching rain came to them, 
big drops spattered, and a spanking downpour 
set in—the daily shower. Picking a spreading 
tree, they squatted against the trunk, glad 
enough to slip their packs and rest. 

Suddenly, some distance ahead, a faint yell 


THE TOELESS MAN 


203 


broke through the slash of falling water. It 
came but once. 

At its own good time the rain swept onward 
and the light brightened. The four arose and 
advanced, keenly alert. No sound but the steady 
drip of moisture came to their ears, and for a 
time no new sight met their eyes. Then Rand 
stopped short—looked—listened—and advanced 
on something at a bend in the trail. 

There, face down, lay a man. Fie was naked, 
black-haired, but apparently a white. His hands 
were dug into the dirt as if he had tried to raise 
himself after falling. His back was a welter of 
spear wounds. 

Some one had run him down and stabbed 
him repeatedly in savage ferocity; stabbed him 
again and again after the death-thruSt. Then 
the killer had vanished into the rain-swept jun¬ 
gle, carrying with him the spear. Nowhere 
around the body now was sign of any man but 
the newcomers. 

Rand stooped, looking closer. On the skin 
above and below the death-wounds were scars, 
not old, left by a whip. 

Turning him over, the four looked down into 
a gaunt face overgrown by black beard: a face 
of Spanish cast, coupled with certain Indian fea¬ 
tures; the face of a mestizo, Peruvian or Ecua¬ 
dorean. Their eyes ran down his frame. Then 
every one started. 

Back into their minds flashed the words of 


204 


TIGER RIVER 


Jose, describing the crazed Rafael Pardo who 
had reeled into Iquitos with his bag of gold: 

“His skin was seamed with scars like those 
of a whip. His toes were gone—every one 
cut off!” 

This murdered man on the ground, as they 
had just seen, also bore whip scars. And his 
feet were mutilated. Not one toe remained. 


CHAPTER XIX 

THE GOLDEN MOUNTAINS 

S TARING down at that maltreated man, the 
| four muttered in growling undertones. 
When they lifted their gaze and peered 
again into the misty depths ahead their faces 
were hard set. 

“We’ll halt here,” said McKay. “Unsling 
packs.” 

The burdens dropped. Tim, his blue eyes 
glittering, slipped the safety-catch off his breech 
bolt and lunged ahead, seeking the man who had 
speared the scarred victim. 

“Dave! Stop him!” added McKay, without 
raising his voice. 

Rand, also ready for action, loped away after 
the mad Irishman. Even when cool, there was 
nothing subtle or stealthy about Tim; and when 
enraged he charged like an infuriated bull, see¬ 
ing red and oblivious of the disturbance he made. 
Now he was slapping down his feet and knock¬ 
ing aside drooping bush noisily enough to warn 
his quarry long before he could overtake it. 
Hearing the pursuit, the man—or men—ahead 
would undoubtedly slip into cover and spear him 
in the back after he passed. 

But Rand did not attempt to fulfill the com- 

205 


206 


TIGER RIVER 


mand literally and stop him short. He only 
sprinted up to him and hoarsely whispered: 
“Less noise! They’ll dodge you!” 

The fear of alarming and losing his prey 
slowed Tim down at once, whereas an appeal to 
“go easy” or to “watch yourself” would have 
resulted only in a contemptuous, snort and an 
increase of speed. Before long he stopped of his 
own accord, breathing hard and glaring around. 

“We must have passed him,” he panted. “He 
ain’t had time to git this far. Skulkin’ in the 
bush back of us, most likely.” 

His companion thought otherwise, but he did 
not say so. The Indian probably had turned 
back immediately after killing his man and 
loped away on his back trail, moving without 
haste but eating up space at every stride. By 
this time he undoubtedly was well ahead, un¬ 
conscious of the fact that white men were behind 
him. Further pursuit now would mean a long 
chase and probable ambush. Moreover, the rain 
had washed out any sign of fresh footmarks. 
Common sense demanded a return to their 
companions. 

“Probably,” Rand feigned to agree. “No 
sign up ahead, anyway. Let’s look along back.” 

They looked, and found nothing. Returning 
to the body, they found Knowlton arranging a 
rough cairn of down-blown branches, while Mc¬ 
Kay watched in all directions. 

“Best we can do,” explained the blond man. 


THE GOLDEN MOUNTAINS 


207 


“He’s part white, anyway, and I’m going to give 
him what cover there is. Some thorn branches 
on top will keep off the animals.” 

“What do you make of it, Rod?” asked Rand. 
“Jiveros didn’t do this. They’d have taken his 
head.” 

“Can’t make it out,” admitted the captain. 
“Looks to me like pure savagery. There may be 
some tribe in here that nobody’s heard about. 
Certainly there’s something around here that 
maims men. This fellow had no gold like that 
Pardo chap. Why he should be killed I can’t 
figure.” 

“Personal enmity, perhaps,” hazarded Knowi- 
ton. “Whoever downed him gave him enough 
stabbing to kill him a dozen times. A prisoner, 
possibly, who got gay with an Indian woman and 
then tried to escape.” 

“Prisoner of whom?” 

“Don’t ask me. I’m only guessing.” 

“Mebbe if we keep on pluggin’ we’ll learn a 
lot,” Tim morosely suggested. “And here’s 
hopin’ I git the guy that done this! I’m sore, I 
am. Killin’s bad enough, but this cuttin’ off toes 
and stabbin’ in the back—grrrumph!” 

For a moment all stood squinting again along 
the empty track which led into the north. The 
same thought came to all at once. 

“Jose’s up ahead somewhere—or his gang is, 
or ought to be,” Knowlton voiced it. 

“Hozy wouldn’t have no hand in nothin’ like 


208 


TIGER RIVER 


this,” Tim remonstrated. “Mebbe his gang 
would; but how would this guy git past ’em all? 
Whoever got him was chasin’ him.” 

“And these feet have been toeless a long time,” 
Rand added. 

“Looks as if the Pachac crowd were side¬ 
tracked,” said McKay. “Or else this chap came 
in from some other trail. Come. Let’s move.” 

Tim and Knowlton bore the dead man to the 
cairn and covered him. Then they shouldered 
their packs. The file got under way. 

Once more in the lead, Rand studied the damp 
trail more closely even than usual. It gave no 
sign for a time, the rain having blurred all marks 
except the fresh boot-heel tracks left by Tim’s 
feet and his own. Not until they had labored up 
and down and onward for some distance did he 
find what he watched for. Then, reaching a spot 
where thick interlacing of branches overhead 
had formed a gigantic umbrella and thrown the 
downpour aside, he slowed, squinted, and 
nodded. 

New footmarks receded ahead—the tracks of 
bare feet bound northward. And they had been 
made by more than one man. 

He said nothing until an extra steep climb 
made all pause at the crest of another bank to 
recover their breath. When his lungs again were 
pumping normally he stated his deduction. 

“Small gang of killers trailed that fellow pur¬ 
posely to get him. When they ran him down they 


THE GOLDEN MOUNTAINS 


209 


finished him quick and started straight back. 
Looks as if they were working under orders and 
hurried back to report success. Otherwise they’d 
have hung around until the rain let up.” 

“Mebbe they did.” 

“No. They went at once, regardless. Rain 
has been washing their trail. Good thing they 
did, too.” 

“Why?” 

“Otherwise we’d be minus one crazy Irish¬ 
man.” 

“Huh? Say, feller, d’ye think I can’t handle 
meself-” 

“With a bunch of spears in your back?” 

Tim blinked. 

“Oh. Yeah. I git ye. Lemme charge past 
and then heave their harpoons? Uh-huh. Wal, 
that’s the only way they could git away with it, 
I’ll tell the world.” 

Nevertheless the belligerent ex-sergeant 
twitched his shoulders and sneaked a look at the 
forest behind him. He had been shot once in the 
back—in France, by a German infantryman who 
had pretended surrender and then used a short- 
barreled pistol—and now the old wound seemed 
to burn. Maybe he surmised why Rand had fol¬ 
lowed him in his recent reckless run and in¬ 
veigled him back. At any rate, his next words 
seemingly had little connection with his last 
utterance. # 

“Ye’re a good skate, Davey, ol’ sock.” 


210 


TIGER RIVER 


Davey, the good skate, smiled and then 
plodded away. 

As before, he kept watch of the retreating 
footprints before him, though not so carefully 
now, since he had learned that -what he suspected 
was true. They were visible only at intervals, 
in spots where the ground was soft, wet, and 
protected from the bygone rain. At length the 
rainfall ceased to have any influence on the 
marks, and the scout knew that hereabouts the 
killers had emerged from the westward-speeding 
shower. The tracks faded out, reappeared 
farther on, vanished, showed again at another 
place; always spaced the same, showing a steady 
pace, and always following the mysterious trail 
toward the mountains. 

He noticed, too, as automatically as he 
breathed, the creeping slant of the shadows cast 
by the westering sun. For many w 7 eeks—ever 
since descending from the Andes into the low¬ 
lands, in fact—this had been their only means 
of gauging the passage of the hours; for every 
watch in the party had stopped after a few days 
in the heavy moisture charging the air east of the 
colossal cordilleras, and thus they had been re¬ 
duced to the most primitive means of time 
measurement. Now he knew that in little more 
than an hour the grueling advance must end for 
that day, if a safe and snug camp for the night 
was to be made. 

The hour dragged past, filled with nothing but 


THE GOLDEN MOUNTAINS 


211 


Tim’s summary of their previous marching— 
“jungle and work and bugs and sweat.” The 
feet of the men behind, and his own as well, were 
slipping now on roots and in wet spots which, 
earlier in the day, they would have cleared with¬ 
out effort; the legs now had lost resiliency, and 
the hungry, overworn bodies were becoming like 
engines whose fuel was burning out. But the 
present spot was unsuitable for camping—an up¬ 
land, devoid of live water. So he tramped on, 
seeking a night haven. 

The ground still rose. It held no more of 
those heartbreaking gullies, however, and prog¬ 
ress was not too difficult, even for nearly ex¬ 
hausted men. Doggedly they kept putting one 
foot before the other until half an hour more 
had passed. Then the light ahead grew brighter. 
The trees seemed to thin out. 

Studying the forest around him, the scout 
presently spied something and paused. The col¬ 
umn stood hunched over, the three behind 
looking the questions they had not the breath 
to ask. 

“Dry camp,” puffed Rand. “Getting late. 
Got to stop. Water trees here. We can make 
out.” 

He jerked his head aside. Scanning the tim¬ 
ber, the others recognized a tree which they knew 
but had never yet had to rely on—the huadhuas, 
or water tree, a bamboo from whose joints could 
be obtained quarts of clear water. They nodded, 


TIGER RIVER 


{212 

dropped packs, staggered, adjusted their bal¬ 
ances to the sudden loss of weight, and looked 
about for a good place to make camp away from 
the trail. 

“Over there,” directed McKay, picking a place 
well bushed but not too thick, and near a couple 
of widely spaced huadhuas. Heaving up their 
packs on one shoulder, they threaded their way 
into the covert, cast about for snakes, found 
none, and sank down for a brief rest. 

Presently Rand arose and, with no explana¬ 
tion, returned to the trail. Along it he journeyed 
toward that thinning of the trees. He was gone 
for some little time. When he returned his eyes 
glowed. 

“Didn’t mean to slack on camp work,” he said, 
glancing around at the results of the labors of 
his mates. “Been scouting. Come on. Want 
to show you something.” 

They followed him. Along the path they 
went, feeling almost fresh again without their 
back burdens. The forest grew thinner and thin¬ 
ner. All at once they stopped, subdued exclama¬ 
tions breaking from them. 

They stood at the brink of a sharp declivity 
where, years ago, a land-slip had occurred. 
Under them yawned a sizable gulf, partly filled 
with water dammed by the fallen earth. But, 
after one glance, they gave no attention to it. 
Their gaze darted off to the northwest. 

Tor the first time in many a weary day they 


THE GOLDEN MOUNTAINS 


213 


saw mountains. For the first time they looked 
on the end of their long trail. 

There in the north, blue-black at the base and 
gleaming golden at the summits, rose the tumbled 
upheavals of a bygone age: the looping range of 
the Pastassa, sprawling outrider of the tremen¬ 
dous column of the Andes. The misty atmos¬ 
phere of the lower lands, which usually blurred 
the vista from this point, was swept clean for 
once by a stiff north wind now hurling itself at 
the faces of the four invaders; and in the fast¬ 
lifting light of the dropping sun the glowing 
peaks seemed looming over them, aglitter with 
unminted treasure—a promise, a lure, which 
might prove true or false. 

Somewhere beyond that range, draining its 
northern slopes, the Curaray flowed down its 
golden bed to the Napo. Somewhere beyond 
its western segment stretched the river valley of 
the Pastassa, home-land of the head-shrinkers 
whose roving outposts twice had come into the 
trail of the four. Somewhere ahead in that 
great pocket of the mountains the trail must end 
at—what? The grim place where men went 
mad? The final port of all the missing men of 
the Tigre Yacu? 

Whatever might wait in the few remaining 
traverses between here and the cordillera, it now 
was masked by the rolling jungle and the long 
shadows thrown from the western wall. Below 
the sunlit summits stretched a twilight land 


214 


TIGER RIVER 


wherein showed no sign of man; an expanse 
which, for all the eye could discern, might have 
lain untrodden by human foot since first it rose 
out of the waters of the vast inland sea. Only 
the vague path still leading onward, only the 
bodies of the mutilated man and of the head¬ 
hunters who had come down it, proved that men 
moved somewhere under that baffling jungle 
cover girt by the mountain rim. 

McKay, first to move, drew out his compass. 
The quivering needle verified the sun slant: they 
were gazing north-northwest. Returning it to 
his pocket, he remarked in a matter-of-fact tone: 
“Better move. It’ll be getting dark soon.” 

Rand, who had looked out at the same scene 
once before, faced about promptly. Knowlton, 
his blue eyes shining with the light of the 
dreamer who sees his vision at last coming true, 
stood a moment longer before reluctantly turn¬ 
ing away. Tim pivoted on one heel, yawned, 
and agreed: “Yeah. I’m hungry.” 

Through the thickening shadows they filed 
back to their covert. There Knowlton spoke. 

“Well, by thunder, we’ve something to look 
forward to now. We’re almost there. The 
golden mountains!” 

“Mebbe,” said Tim. 

“Maybe what?” 

“Golden. If gold’s there, it keeps settin’ tight 
and don’t go down the river. Say, where’s that 
river, anyways? We lost it.” 


THE GOLDEN MOUNTAINS 


215 


“Over east somewhere,” said Rand. “It’s no 
good to us any more. The trail is the thing to 
follow.” 

“If there’s no gold, Tim,” challenged Knowl- 
ton, “where did Pardo get his? He came out 
of here—scarred and crippled like the fellow we 
met to-day.” 

“Uh-huh. Wal, here’s hopin’. We’ve had a 
run for our money—now I want to see the money 
for the run.” 

“If it isn’t there we’ll keep on going until we 
find some,” smiled McKay. “It’s only two or 
three hundred miles farther to the Llanganati. 
There’s gold there—if you can find it,” 

“Yeah? Only two-three hundred miles, huh? 
Totin’ a pack all the way, o’ course?” 

“Of course. But when you get there all you 
have to do is to find the Incas’ lake and get out 
the gold.” 

“Uh-huh. And all I got to do to git from 
here to there to-morrer mornin’ is to tune up me 
airyplane and let ’er rip. Talk to me about it 
after breakfast, cap. I’m tired now.” 

“What’s this yarn about the Incas’ lake, 
Rod?” asked Rand. “Same old stuff you hear in 
Peru?” 

“Same stuff. Incas threw billions of gold into 
an artificial lake on the side of the Llanganati 
during the Conquest. Good many men have lost 
their lives trying to find it. Still, it seems to ring 
truer than most of those Inca lake stories. 


2l6 


TIGER RIVER 


“They tell about one fellow named Val- 
verde—Spaniard, of course—who was poor 
as dirt and went native. Awhile after he took 
his Indian wife he became enormously rich. 
Girl’s father showed him how to get at 
the Inca gold and helped him raise a lot of 
it. He went back to Spain, and when he 
died he told the king of Spain how to get 
at the rest of the treasure. But it’s still 
there.” 

Tim’s eyes began to glisten. This was a new 
tale: a tale of lost treasure hundreds of miles 
away—far more alluring than the possibility of 
equal treasure within a few leagues. Inca gold! 
The dream of every Andes adventurer for more 
than three centuries! 

“And nobody’s got it?” he demanded. 

“No. Expeditions don’t come back. Even 
one led by a priest—Padre Longo—didn’t come 
back. After that, nobody else had the nerve to 
try for it.” 

“Gee! Say, if we don’t find nothin’ here le’s 
keep on goin’! We can git there some time—if 
our cartridges hold out—and it’ll take somethin’ 
gosh-awful to lick this gang after we land there. 
What d’ye say, fellers?” 

The others laughed. Pessimistic a few minutes 
ago, croaking over the lack of gold in the Tigre 
—and now all afire to dare hundreds of miles of 
cordillera in chasing a new rainbow: that was 
Tim Ryan all over. 


THE GOLDEN MOUNTAINS 


217 


“We’ll see what’s here first,” chuckled McKay. 
“Let’s eat.” 

Silence fell on the darkening camp, broken 
only by masticatory noises and gulping of water 
previously drained from the huadhuas. Then 
across the jungle roof swept the sunset noise of 
birds and animals, announcing night. Gloom en¬ 
veloped them. They ate on, wordless. 

All at once they stopped chewing and leaned 
forward. On the wings of the wind still pouring 
out of the north came a new sound. It was not 
the roar of a tigre, the death scream of stricken 
animal or man, the snarl of jungle battle, the re¬ 
port of a gun. Any of these would have held 
them alert for a time; but the thing they did hear 
made them squat motionless as frozen men until 
it ceased. Even after it died they held that same 
rigid pose, staring dumbly into the dark. 

Deep, slow, doleful as a requiem for the lost 
men who had never returned from their quest 
into this fastness—a bell had tolled. 


CHAPTER XX 

DEAD MAN’S LAND 


N OONDAY sun stabbed down through the 
branches stretching over the curved crest 
of a long, rambling ridge. In scattered 
splotches it lit up sections of a faintly marked 
path leading along the upland. Filtering through 
tall ferns beside the path, it sprayed over bearded 
men in torn, jungle-stained clothing who sat on 
their packs and smoked. 

Another fireless meal had just been finished, 
and the usual cigarettes were aglow. But the 
four were not lounging in the careless attitudes 
customary to men relaxing in the languor induced 
by food and tobacco. Each leaned a little for¬ 
ward, his feet under him, ready for a sudden up¬ 
ward jump. Each faced inward toward his com¬ 
panions, but his eyes kept swinging back and 
forth in vigilant watch of the forest beyond the 
man opposite. Between his knees, butt on the 
ground and left hand curled around the barrel, 
each held an upright rifle. And every man’s 
pistol hung ready for a swift draw. 

“If the cusses would only show themselves!” 
complained Tim. “If we could only git a look 
at ’em oncet! They been trailin’ along with us 
the last two days, and we dang well know it. But 

218 


DEAD MAN’S LAND 


219 


never a hair will they show. Me, I’m ready for 
a scrap any ol’ time, and the sooner the quicker. 
But this thing of expectin’ a spear or a poison 
arrer in me ribs any minute and never seein’ me 
man—I don’t like it.” 

The tense attitudes of the others showed that 
they felt exactly the same way. For two days, 
as Tim said, they had been under that strain— 
the knowledge that they were escorted by flitting 
Things which they could always feel, could some¬ 
times hear, but could never see: an unceasing- 
harassment which wore on their nerves more 
than half a dozen deadly fights. For two nights, 
standing guard in two-hour shifts, they had felt 
the invisible Something close by, ready to strike 
yet never striking. Even now they were positive 
that the stealthy movements which they heard 
from time to time were not those of animals; 
that the slight waving of a bush here and there 
was not caused by a breeze. 

“Next time I see those ferns over there move, 
I’m going to shoot into them,” breathed Knowl- 
ton, eyes fixed on something beyond Rand. 

“Hold in, Merry I” warned McKay. “That’s 
a rookie trick.” 

“I don’t give a whoop! They’re there, and 
if they won’t start it I’m willing to.” 

“Take a brace, man! You’ll hit nothing. 
You’ll start more than you can finish. Don’t be 
an old woman!” 

“I’ve got a theory about this thing,” stated 


220 


TIGER RIVER 


Rand, as calmly as if he did not feel Death lurk¬ 
ing at his shoulder blades. “These fellows, who¬ 
ever they are, are willing to keep us coming 
along. They have a use for us—up ahead some¬ 
where; up where that bell rings. If you really 
want to start something, start back along the 
trail instead of ahead. I’ll bet you wouldn’t get 
ten feet away.” 

McKay nodded. 

“Remember how that toeless chap’s back 
looked,” he added. 

At the memory of that red welter the lieu¬ 
tenant twitched his shoulders. 

“While ye’re springin’ theories, I got one o’ 
me own,” Tim hinted darkly. 

“Well?” 

“Wal, I ain’t much of a hand to believe in 
things that ain’t. Jest the same, there’s some 
missin’ men up here. They’ll keep on bein’ 
missin’—they’re dead! And they’re the guys 
that’s round us now!” 

“Ghosts ? Nonsense!” 

“Mebbe. But why can’t we see ’em? Why 
don’t they cough or spit or breathe loud like live 
men? Who pulls that there funeral bell at 
night? How come a bell up here, anyways? I 
tell ye, it ain’t a real bell! These things ain’t 
live men! And it’s that bell, them dead men 
snoopin r round, that drives live men crazy up 
here! If I was alone here long I’d be ravin’, 
meself.” 


DEAD MAN’S LAND 


221 


There was no levity in his voice. And, though 
the others tried to laugh, their mirth was forced. 
Despite himself, every man had fallen under the 
uncanny spell of the deep jungle during the weeks 
on the weird Tigre Yacu. And it is a fact, as 
experienced jungle rovers know, that in the vast 
tropic wilderness are things which none can ex¬ 
plain. Sounds like the clang of an iron bar, 
where there is no bar or iron; the ringing of a 
bell where no bell could possibly be; a pene¬ 
trating, nerve-destroying hiss like that of a 
huge steam pipe, hundreds of miles from steam; 
these and other sounds, which the Indians 
ascribe to demons, coupled with the sudden 
and absolute disappearance of men who leave 
no trace of their fate—these are a few of 
the unearthly occurrences in the great green 
abyss below the Andes which confound reason 
and sense. And these four were overworn by 
hardship. 

But none except straightforward Tim would 
admit, even to himself, that the weird espionage 
of those invisible Things was undermining his 
scorn of the supernatural. 

“If there were such a thing as a Dead Man’s 
Land, and if this were it,” the lieutenant 
doggedly combated, “you’d never catch Pachac 
and his people going up here. They’re still 
ahead.” 

“Yeah? How d’ye know they are? We ain’t 
seen a sign of ’em lately. Ask ol’ Eagle-Eye 


222 TIGER RIVER 

Rand. There ain’t nothin’ to show they ever 
got this far.” 

Rand shook his head half an inch. Tim spoke 
truth. 

“Then where did they go, if not up here?” 
Knowlton persisted. “There’s been no sign that 
they turned off.” 

“Where’d the other guys go that come up 
here? How do we know what got ’em?” 

There was a silence. Now and then a fern 
nodded, a slight creeping sound floated to them, 
but no life showed. 

“Theories are no good,” bluntly declared Mc¬ 
Kay. “But I’ve got one, too. That bell belongs 
to some old Spanish mission; those old Jesuits 
would go anywhere—the more God-forsaken the 
place, the better. The descendants of their con¬ 
verts are still here. Maybe they’re virulent 
fanatics and practice a few fancy torments on 
fellows who don’t come up to their requirements. 
Remember what was said about the wheel await¬ 
ing us.” 

Another silence. Then Knowlton said: 
“Sounds more reasonable than Tim’s night¬ 
mare. That might explain the whip scars and 
the toe-cutting, too. If that’s it, I’m out of luck. 
My folks were Baptists.” 

“Mine were Episcopalians,” from Rand. 

“Presbyterians,” from McKay. 

“Me, I’m s’posed to be Catholic, but I’m a 
danged poor one,” finished Tim. “ ’Twouldn’t 


DEAD MAN’S LAND 


223 


do me no good, anyways, if I got caught by a 
bunch that tried to ram religion into me with a 
hot poker. I’d git mad and tell ’em I was a 
Turk or somethin’. But what’s the odds? There 
ain’t religion enough in this hard-boiled crowd 
to hurt none of us, or help us either. Wait a 
minute, though. Mebbe I can git a rise out o’ 
these guys.” 

He rose, facing a spot where he had detected 
several unexplainable dips of a bush. Slowly he 
made the sign of the cross. 

After a minute he made it again. No sound 
or movement answered him. 

“Nope. Yer dope’s no good, cap. The cross 
don’t mean nothin’ here. Now le’s see if a li’l’ 
Irish nerve will git us anything.” 

With steady tramp he advanced at the spot he 
had watched. Ever so slightly, the bush dipped 
again. A faint rustle, hardly audible, came from 
beyond it. Eyes narrowed, jaw out, the ex-ser¬ 
geant plowed into it and stopped. After peering 
around he backed out again. His broad face was 
not so florid as before. 

“There ain’t no sign here! No footmarks— 
no busted leaves—nothin’! By cripes, it’s like I 
tell ye-—these guys ain’t human!” 

The others, who also had risen and stood 
ready for action, glanced around and at one an¬ 
other. Knowlton shrugged. 

“You fellows have all sprung your theories. 
Nov/ here’s mine,” he announced. “We’ll get 


224 


TIGER RIVER 


to the bottom of things if we keep going. And 
we’ll get nowhere stopping here. Let’s go.” 

With this pronouncement everyone agreed. 

One by one they slung their packs—one by 
one, so that three always could maintain their 
readiness for anything. The donning of their 
burdens now was not so difficult as it had been 
a few days ago, for the men were hardened to 
them and the packs were lighter: too light, in 
fact, so far as their food content was concerned. 
But Tim, though anxious to be moving away 
from the masking ferns, could not forbear his 
customary half-serious growl. 

“Dead guys don’t have to git humpbacked lug- 
gin’ these blasted packs, anyways. If these fel¬ 
lers are goin’ to knock me in the head I hope it’ll 
come quick, so’s I can git a li’l’ rest out of it. 
I’d hate to git killed jest when I got to a place 
where I could drop this thing for good.” 

With a final heave of the shoulders to swing 
the weight into the right place, he fell into posi¬ 
tion in file and took up the step. The column 
plodded away, heads moving from side to side 
in constant watch. Around a huge tree it wound, 
and into the northward trail it vanished. 

As it disappeared, a louder rustle sounded 
among the ferns and bushes, which swayed more 
abruptly than before. Then they stood motion¬ 
less again, and the sound died. The encompass¬ 
ing Things also had moved on. 

Foot by foot, stride by stride, the four forged 


DEAD MAN’S LAND 


225 


onward along the curving ridge top. Inch By 
inch the sun shadows crept eastward. Hour by 
hour the hot afternoon grew old. And as stead¬ 
ily as the little file swung ahead, as smoothly as 
the sun rolled in its course, the escort of silent 
Dead Men kept pace on either flank of the ad¬ 
vancing force. 

The ridge seemed to have no end. It rose 
in long grades, sloped away again, lifted and 
ran level, dipped at another easy slant, but 
still remained a ridge. At times, as the for¬ 
est growth thinned, the marchers glimpsed the 
sky on either side. But they saw nothing of 
what lay out beyond those occasional side 
openings, nothing of what waited ahead at 
the end of the upland—and nothing of the 
Things trooping along in the cover at the sides 
of the path. 

As the hours passed, no halt was made. None 
was needed on this ungullied upland, where no 
sharp declivities had to be scaled and the lungs 
functioned as rhythmically as the feet swung. 
Mile after mile crept away behind, until Tim’s 
unspoken thought was reflected in the minds of 
his comrades: 

“We’re really travelin’ now! We’d ought to 
git somewheres by night!” 

And get somewhere they did. At length, with 
an abruptness that halted them short, they 
emerged into open air. They dug in their heels 
and gave back, smitten with sudden qualms at 


226 


TIGER RIVER 


the pit of the stomach. Almost under their feet 
yawned a gulf. 

A sheer drop of hundreds of feet—a wooded 
country below—a tremendous mountain wall 
fronting them a half mile away; these were the 
things their startled minds registered in the first 
flashing instant of instinctive recoil. So long had 
their vision been confined by the dense tropic 
growth that the sudden burst into emptiness 
shocked their brains and sickened their bodies. 
Dizzily they wavered backward. 

For many seconds they hung there in a close- 
drawn knot, while eyes and nerves and equilib¬ 
rium readjusted themselves. At length they 
cautiously edged forward. A little back from 
the brink they peered downward, studying the 
green carpet far below. 

It seemed a solid mass of jungle, unbroken by 
any clearing, unlined by river or road: a somber 
abyss wherein might live weird monsters 
spawned in the hideous Mesozoic age, but where 
the foot of man never had trodden. It curved 
away at both ends, its continuation cut off from 
the eye by jutting outcrops of the wall on which 
they stood. A yawning pit—nothing more. 

Out of it, on the farther side, towered the 
mountain—a huge bulk, densely overgrown in its 
lower reaches, clad more thinly up above, nearly 
bald at the top. Along its side showed no indi¬ 
cation of life except an occasional pair of parrots 
winging their way from point to point. Grim, 


DEAD MAN’S LAND 


227 


forbidding, it brooded over its chasm as if guard¬ 
ing its fastness from invasion. 

Up and down the four studied it, and back and 
forth along the gulf they swung their gaze. At 
the first appalled glance the drop had seemed to 
be at least a thousand feet, but now that they 
had steadied themselves they estimated it at not 
more than five hundred. The mountain shoot¬ 
ing up beyond might be three thousand feet high; 
possibly several hundred more. How long the 
curving valley might be they could not tell. But 
there seemed to be no reason for exploring it, 
nor any way- 

Tim drew in his breath sharply. The others 
glanced at him and found him looking over one 
shoulder, ashen-faced. 

“Oh cripes, I knowed it!” he breathed. “Here 
they are, and they’re dead as hell!” 

They whirled. At last they saw the Things. 

A bare spear’s-throw away, blocking the trail, 
stood men. But such men! Their ribs pro¬ 
jected. Their arms seemed bones. Their eyes 
gleamed hollowly under matted black hair. And 
their skins were green. 

Green as the jungle around them, they were. 
Had they moved and slipped into the bush, they 
would have vanished like specters. But they did 
not move. At least a dozen strong, they stood 
there in a solid body, holding javelins poised at 
their shoulders. The points of those spears 
were long, saw-edged, and dark with the stain 



228 


TIGER RIVER 


of poison. One cast, one scratch from those 
venomed edges, and the whites would be doomed. 

Fronted by death, backed by death, the four 
stood like statues. Then one of the ghastly crea¬ 
tures slowly lifted its left arm. Its green fore¬ 
finger pointed beyond the trapped men. With 
dread significance, that finger turned down. In 
the soulless eyes of the creature was a command. 

“Oh Gawd!” groaned Tim. “We got to 
jump off!” 


CHAPTER XXI 

INTO THE ABYSS 

M OTIONLESS, wordless, breathless, the 
other three stood facing the gruesome 
things blocking the only avenue of re¬ 
treat from the brink. 

The green arm pointing to death hung rigid, 
the cavernous eyes remained fixed in a snaky 
stare. The poisoned points neither lifted nor 
lowered, poising as if truly held in dead hands. 
Only the regular rise and fall of the breathing 
lungs under the gaunt ribs proved that the 
Things were living men. 

Rand, without moving his lips, spoke nasally 
from a corner of his mouth. 

“Drop flat and shoot from the ground. 
Spears may go over us. Give the word, Rod.” 

But McKay did not speak that word. Instead, 
he took his eyes from the green menace and 
glanced behind. Then he coolly turned his back, 
stepped to the extreme edge, and moved along it, 
looking down. 

“Not necessary,” he said, after a moment. 
“Trail goes down here. We’ll follow it.” 

“Trail?” Knowlton echoed in amazement. 
“Where?” 

“Rock stairs drop to a shelf. Pretty risky, 

229 


230 


TIGER RIVER 


but possible. Not much worse than some places 
we struck in the Andes. Come and look.” 

Gingerly the blond man backed. Tim and 
Rand maintained their wary watch of the 
Things. 

McKay pointed a little to the left of a seg¬ 
ment of the ragged edge. There, as he had said, 
a flight of crude steps jutted from the sheer face 
of the precipice—-perhaps a dozen of them, 
widening as they descended to a narrow shelf 
leading away to the westward. The top stair 
was hardly two feet wide, the shelf not more 
than four: a precarious passage flanked on one 
side by the upstanding wall and on the other by 
nothing at all. 

“Ugh!” muttered the lieutenant. “Dangerous 
even for an Indian. Impossible for us. The 
slightest bump of a pack against that rough rock 
throws you out and down. And our boots will 
slip on those slanting stones. Can’t be done.” 

“Got to do it, or end our trail here.” 

It was stark truth. This was the trail. To 
quit it here meant, at best, only a long, sour re¬ 
treat to the canoes and back down the Tigre. 
At worst, it meant death from the poisoned 
spears still closing their path. And there was 
little chance that all those spears would miss 
their marks. 

“Once we’re on that shelf, we can travel,” 
Knowlton conceded. “But getting there is the 
job.” 


INTO THE ABYSS 


231 


“Take off pack. Take off boots. Go down 
backward, easing the pack after you with your 
hands, step by step. If the pack slips let it go 
overboard. I’ll try it out first.” 

Stepping back a little from the edge, he nodded 
to the green men. The spearheads wavered 
slightly, sinking a little lower. McKay unslung 
his pack, sat down, and began unlacing his boots. 

“Tim—Dave—get ready,” he urged. “Never 
mind those fellows. They won’t do anything 
just now.” 

His calm voice expressed more confidence than 
he felt. Yet he was reasonably sure that no at¬ 
tack would be made unless precipitated by his 
own party. These green men, he reflected, could 
have attacked at any time during the past two 
days, and with greater safety to themselves. 
Their object, as Rand had said, seemed to be to 
herd the invaders onward, not to kill unless they 
attempted retreat. What fate waited beyond 
those stairs he could not even surmise. But they 
could hardly be trapped in a more hopeless posi¬ 
tion than the present one; and they still retained 
their weapons. 

“Ooch! Sufferin’ goats!” blurted Tim, when 
he saw what must be done. “Go down that? 
I’ll fight this gang bare-handed first!” 

“Then you’ll fight alone,” retorted the captain, 
tugging at the first boot. “The rest of us are 
going down.” 

Ranci said nothing. He studied the hazardous 


232 


TIGER RIVER 


path, clamped his jaws tighter, and began 
preparations for descent. Tim looked at him, 
at the others, at the green men; opened and shut 
his mouth; mumbled dolefully, and took off his 
pack. 

As McKay arose, with boots slung around his 
neck and rifle looped across his shoulders, a 
sound from the southwest throbbed across the 
silence. It was the far-off boom of drums. 

“Huh! They’re at it again,” commented Tim. 

“Same ol’ message stuff we been hearin’- 

Hullo! What ails these dead guys?” 

At the rumble of the drums the green men 
had started. Now they had turned their heads 
and were looking back into the jungle. They 
stirred, lifted their spears higher in an involun¬ 
tary gesture of defense, drew a little closer to¬ 
gether as if threatened with attack. For the 
moment they seemed to have forgotten the 
whites. 

If the adventurers had snatched the oppor¬ 
tunity quickly enough they might have poured a 
devastating fire into those momentarily unready 
foes; might even, by fast work, have wiped them 
out completely. But none moved. All watched 
the weird creatures in wonder. Soon some of 
the green faces turned back. They now bore a 
trace of human emotion: fear. 

“Guess those drums don’t belong to these 
greenies,” said Knowlton. “They’re Jivero 
drums, undoubtedly, and they seem to spell 



INTO THE ABYSS 


233 


trouble for our genial hosts. We’re not going 
into Jivero country down below, then. That’s 
something.” 

“We’re goin’ into Dead Man’s country, I’m 
thinkin’,” croaked Tim. “This here hole is 
where all the rest of ’em are waitin’ for us. I 
wonder if we’ll look like these guys in a li’l’ 
while.” 

“They’re a good Irish color, Tim,” the cap¬ 
tain grimly joked. “Maybe old Saint Pat is 
waiting for you down below. Here goes to find 
out.” 

“Saint Pete, ye mean. Waitin’ to hand me a 
li’l’ harp the minute I fall often them crazy 

rock steps. But I don’t want no harp yet- 

Hang tight, cap, and go slow, for the love o’ 
Mike!” 

McKay was dragging his pack to the edge. 
Cautiously but coolly he laid it at the top step, 
turned backward, let himself down on hands 
and knees, straightened a leg and felt for the 
second stair. Finding it, he slid over and 
worked down until he had his knees firmly braced 
below. Then, very carefully, he drew the pack 
toward him and tested its balance on the rock 
above. 

“Too heavy and too wide,” he decided. “Haul 
it back, Dave.” 

Rand dragged it back, and the captain rose. 
Once more on the top, he began unstrapping 
his roll. 



234 


TIGER RIVER 


“You were right, Merry— we can’t handle 
these things,” he granted. “Every man take 
what he can carry in his clothes. Get all the 
cartridges and matches, and whatever else you 
can tote without making yourself clumsy. Leave 
the rest.” 

“How about grub?” queried Tim. 

“One meat strip apiece. Down below we’ll 
have to shoot our geub or starve. Don’t over¬ 
load, or you’ll be twanging that harp in a few 
minutes.” 

Faced by that alternative, the four picked 
from the opened packs what they could safely 
stow in pockets, shirts, and empty boots, plus 
their hammocks, the two short axes, and the light 
table gun, which could be stuffed under belts or 
taken down by hand. The remaining duffle was 
ruefully cast into the edge of the bush. The 
green men watched wolfishly, but made no move 
toward the abandoned equipment. 

Again McKay essayed the perilous slant, going 
backward as before, keeping his eyes on the rock 
stairs as he passed downward, feeling his way 
with sockless feet. Once his rifle butt hit a pro¬ 
jection on the wall, jolting him suddenly. His 
mouth twisted, and for a second his eyes swerved 
outward. But he gripped the stair above, raised 
himself a bit, swung his hips somewhat away 
from the wall, lowered himself again inch by 
inch—and the gun scraped past. A few more 
careful moves, and he stood on the shelf. 


INTO THE ABYSS 


235 


“One down,” he announced, his voice a little 
husky. “Who comes next?” 

“I,” volunteered Rand. And, grimly steady, 
he made the descent without mishap. 

“Lemme go now,” begged Tim. “Me feet are 
gittin’ colder all the time. If I wait any longer 
me legs will be stiff to me hips.” 

Knowlton, who stood ready to go, drew back 
and made room for the red man—who now was 
not red, but distinctly pale—to pass. Tim got 
on all fours, fumbled to a footing on the first 
step, and drew a long breath. 

“Here goes nothin’!” he quavered, trying to 
grin. “And may God have mercy on me soul!” 
His last utterance came from the bottom of his 
heart. 

“Slowly and easy does it, old top,” the lieu¬ 
tenant warned. “Take all the time in the world. 
Don’t look down. Just ease yourself down slow 
—slow—that’s the way! Get a good foothold 
every time. Slow—easy—it widens out at every 
step, you know.” 

Set-jawed, glassy-eyed, Tim inched down. For 
him the passage really was harder than for any 
of the others: he was too broad and stocky. His 
left side hung out over the abyss, and his mus¬ 
cular but short legs lacked the reach of McKay’s, 
or even of Rand’s. The pair below watched 
every movement, coached him at every down¬ 
ward reach, warned him of every projection. 
And at last, shaky, gasping like a fish out of 


TIGER RIVER 


236 

water, dripping with cold sweat, he found him¬ 
self beside them. 

“Wal, I—huh—come through without no— 
huh—harp in me hand,” he panted, grasping at 
the wall. “But I wouldn’t do it again for a— 
huh—million dollars. I’m sick to me stummick!” 

“Stand still a minute,” counseled Rand. 
“Watch Merry come down.” 

Knowlton already was backing over the edge. 
He threw a final glance at the green men, who 
showed no sign of intending to follow. 

“So long, you fragrant hunks of green 
cheese!” he mocked. 

The menacing figures spoke no word. Their 
lusterless eyes showed no glint of anger at his 
taunting grin. Only their spearheads, now 
almost resting on the ground, lifted a little and 
pointed at his face. 

Knowlton dropped his eyes to the rocks and 
concentrated his attention on the deadly serious 
work of getting down. And now the hand of 
Death, hovering close over the head of each man 
traversing that treacherous spot, showed itself. 

Perhaps it was because he was last in line and 
anxious to join his waiting comrades and move 
on; perhaps it was a touch of recklessness; or 
perhaps the sloping stones were slightly slippery 
from the passage of three perspiring men. At 
any rate, the lieutenant descended just a trifle 
too fast. Reaching for the fourth step, he 
slipped. 


INTO THE ABYSS 


237 

His unbooted feet caught the stair and clung. 
But the butt of the rifle on his back hit solidly 
against the same ugly projection which had 
caught McKay’s. The barrel slapped sidewise 
and struck the blond head a vicious blow. 

He lurched out toward the chasm, dazedly 
clutching at the step above. Then, balanced on 
the utter edge of the abyss, he lay limp. 

Another movement, a slip of the gun, a shift¬ 
ing of something in pockets or belt, would turn 
him over and slide him into the green maw gap¬ 
ing below. 

With a hoarse croak Tim jumped upward. 
Tim, who had confessed cold feet; Tim, still 
actually ill from dread; Tim, who would not 
touch those stairs again for a fortune, sprang up 
them like a mountain goat. His body slithered 
against the face of the precipice. His big hands 
clutched, one at the edge of a step, the other 
at his lieutenant’s slack shirt. In one smooth, 
steady haul he slid the stunned man in toward 
the cliff. 

And while the two below stood frozen, unable 
to help, he worked his own way backward and 
slipped the reviving man down stair after stair. 
He did not look to see where he stepped. He 
planted his feet with unerring surety, grasped 
tiny projections without seeing them, balanced 
himself as lightly as a fly. In hoarse tones he 
muttered over and over: 

“Jest lay still, looey. Lay limp and we’ll make 


TIGER RIVER 


238 

it. We’re most down and goin’ strong. Atta¬ 
boy I Lay still, oF feller, la-a-ay still!” 

And he reached the shelf, laid his man out 
straight beside the wall, and grinned gray-faced 
at him. Then he wavered, clutched at the crag 
beside him, and sank down. And for the next 
few minutes he was absolutely and utterly sick. 

“By God!” breathed McKay. “I’ve seen men 
awarded the D. S. C. for deeds not half as brave 
as that!” 

But when Tim sat up again and weakly 
mopped his face he had a reward worth far 
more to him than government medals—a silent 
grip of the hand and a straight look in the eyes 
from his “looey,” alive and once more ready to 
carry on. No words were spoken. No words 
could have said what eye spoke to eye in that 
long quiet minute there on the face of the wail. 

“Let’s go,” said Rand. 

Carefully they turned about, and slowly they 
filed along the trail, hugging the rock. Up at 
the top of the stair the green men stood watching 
them go. Presently they drew back, and for the 
first time sounds broke from them. With animal 
grunts, they fell on the stale food left behind by 
the white men. 

On along the narrow shelf the four adven¬ 
turers trudged, looking down into the dizzy 
depths no more than they had to. It led on and 
on, widening at times, narrowing again, now 
roofed by overhangs of stone, again open to the 


INTO THE ABYSS 


239 


high blue sky. Under a jutting outcrop it bur¬ 
rowed, and there it turned abruptly to the left. 
The marchers had rounded a shoulder of the 
hill which had cut off their view to the west and 
south. 

There, on a natural platform beyond the cor¬ 
ner, they halted with sudden murmurs. The 
jungle below was no longer without signs of 
man. 

Perhaps a half mile farther on, in a wide 
waterless bay among steep green mountain 
slopes, the trees were thinned out at the top of 
a curving knoll. In that opening, dingy gray, 
showed the lines of stone walls and a house— 
masked by intervening tree-tops, but unmistak¬ 
able. Whether men now dwelt there, what they 
did and why, were questions which only closer 
approach could answer; but men had been there 
—men who built with stone—and not so long 
ago. Otherwise the jungle would have swal¬ 
lowed.up the place. 

Down toward it the high trail now dipped at a 
stiff grade for perhaps three hundred yards. 
Then it vanished into trees, and at that point the 
precipice also ended; the tree-clad slope was a 
slope only, not a drop. The path must wind on 
down that green slant and then swing out to the 
house-capped knoll. Was that knoll the end 
of the trail, the end of all adventure, the 
lair of the dread ogre who swallowed missing 
men? 


240 


TIGER RIVER 


Suddenly the watchers started. A sullen, low, 
awful murmur was shooting toward them from 
the farther mountains. Instantly the solid rock 
under them quivered and swayed. 

“Quake! Down!” barked McKay, falling 
prone. 

The others dropped flat, hugging the stone. 
It moved sickeningly, became still. A few sec¬ 
onds passed. It shuddered again, was motionless. 

Up from the depths rolled several clangs of 
a deep-toned bell. From somewhere below, 
seeming very near, broke a grinding roar fol¬ 
lowed by a great thumping crash. The rock 
quivered once more, but this time as if from a 
blow. 

After a few minutes of waiting for another 
tremor, the prostrate men sat up and looked 
around. Nothing seemed changed. 

“Pretty easy,” remarked Rand. “I’d hate to 
be caught up here in a hard one.” 

“Something dropped, and mighty close,” said 
Knowlton. He crept to the edge and peered 
down. “Not along this side,” he went on. 
“Maybe around the corner.” Rising, he stepped 
to the other side. 

“Did ye hear the bell ring? ’Twas down there 
by that house,” said Tim. “That same dead- 
man’s-bell we been bearin’-” 

“Great guns!” Knowlton’s voice broke in. 
“Look here!” 

As they joined him, he pointed downward, 



INTO THE ABYSS 


241 


then out along the shelf where they had just 
passed. Below, a great chunk of the wall grinned 
up from among crushed trees. Beyond, a long 
gap opened in the face of the cliff. 

“This trail’s closed forever,” declared Mc¬ 
Kay. “Unless we can find some new way out, 
we’re in for life.” 


CHAPTER XXII 

THE END OF THE TRAIL 

S UNSET, blood-red, burned behind the 
mountains. 

Against its fiery flare the great misshapen 
bulks loomed dusky green above the sinister gulf 
in which stood the stone-crowned knoll. In that 
chasm the shadows were welling rapidly upward 
toward the top of the eastern heights. Moving 
along the bottom of the bowl, the four invaders 
found everything around them growing dim 
under the jungle canopy. 

They had swung down the remainder of the 
steep trail without mishap, and without meet¬ 
ing any living thing. Soon after entering the 
trees the path had begun to zigzag back 
and forth along the steep, but no longer pre¬ 
cipitous, side of the towering hill; and now 
it had become merely a succession of easy 
curves rambling on toward the walls guarding 
the house hidden beyond the trees. Along 
it the file was passing at good speed, each 
man still carrying his boots around his neck. 
As always, Rand led, scanning all ahead and 
aside. 

Abruptly he halted, jumped back, collided hard 
with McKay, who now was second in line. Re- 

242 


THE END OF THE TRAIL 


243 

fore him in the dimness a sinuous form moved 
slowly out of the trail. 

“Snake,” he said. “Nearly stepped on him. 
Guess I’ll put on my boots.” 

With more alacrity than caution, the others 
followed his example. The odds and ends of 
equipment which had been carried in the battered 
footgear were shaken tumbling on the dirt, and 
every man hastily jammed his feet into the 
leather legs. By the time the lacing was com¬ 
pleted and they were once more protected to the 
knee, the swiftly deepening shadows had grown 
so dense that it was difficult to find the articles 
they had dropped. And the path was swallowed 
in gloom. 

“Better halt here and eat,” said McKay. 
“There’ll be a good big moon in a little while. 
Can’t see our way now.” 

“Aw, we ain’t got far to go,” objected Tim. 
“And mebbe there’s some water ahead—I’m 
bone dry. And that low-lived snake’s right round 
here somewheres yet. Le’s go a little ways.” 

His only answer was the sound of three pairs 
of jaws biting into the last of the smoked meat 
supply. The others had accepted McKay’s dic¬ 
tum. With no further protest, he straightway 
clamped his jaws in a meat strip of his own. 

The meal was brief, both because of the 
meagerness of the provender and the speed with 
which it was bolted. No man squatted or sat, 
for no man knew how many reptiles might be 


244 


TIGER RIVER 


within striking distance. In lieu of water, each 
finished with a cigarette. 

“No need of going without a smoke,” said 
Knowlton. “We’re in, we can’t get out, and 
anybody who spies my cigarette is welcome to 
come a-running.” 

“Me, I’d like to see somethin’ cornin’—some¬ 
thin’ alive, I mean,” declared Tim. “This place 
is too dang spooky. Ain’t seen nothin’ here but 
one snake, ain’t heard nothin’-” 

Like a blow, the boom of a bell struck his 
words and knocked them into nothing. 

It came from the right. Solemnly it tolled a 
dozen times. Then it was still. 

No other sound followed, save the usual night 
noises from the gloomy depths around. No 
human voice spoke. No dog barked. No cat 
or cow or other domestic animal called. No 
squeak or rattle or bump or footfall betokened 
the presence of men in that house somewhere 
near by. Even the jungle noises here seemed 
weird, ghostly, echoing hollowly among the sur¬ 
rounding heights. Tim shivered. 

After a prolonged silence Rand spoke. 

“A queer hole. Good thing we stopped here. 
We were heading into the woods. Path curves 
back, probably, but we’d have blundered off it.” 

Nobody replied. All stood waiting for the 
moonlight. 

At length it came. The obscurity grew less 
dense. Silvery patches of light appeared here 



THE END OF THE TRAIL 


245 


and there on the earth. The eyes of the wait¬ 
ing men, already dilated wide by the darkness, 
made out clearly the shapes of the near-by 
trees, but not the path. Vague even in daylight, 
that trail now would not again be visible before 
sunrise. 

But McKay moved over into a spot of light, 
studied his compass, and laid a course for Rand. 

“West-northwest. That’ll fetch us out near 
that bell.” 

Rand, after contemplating his compass and 
the trees, nodded and dropped the instrument 
back into his pocket. Now that he had the direc¬ 
tion firmly fixed in mind, his old jungle instinct 
would carry him straight, despite necessary 
windings, without another consultation of the 
magnetized needle. He turned and stepped 
away. 

Slowly the party followed his lead, traveling 
in slants and detours, but ever swinging back to 
the prescribed course as surely as if Rand’s eyes 
were glued to his compass instead of roving all 
about. They slumped into muddy spots, turned 
sharp to dodge bowlders, straddled over down 
trees, and in places chopped their way with the 
machetes. Nowhere did they find flowing water. 
Their thirst, already keen, became acute dis¬ 
comfort as the meat they had swallowed de¬ 
manded liquid. But none spoke of it, or of any¬ 
thing else. 

All at once the trees opened. They halted at 


TIGER RIVER 


246 

the edge of the forest, looking up at the cleared 
knoll. 

They saw only stumps, low shrubs, scattered 
trees of great girth, and, at the top, a high stone 
wall, above which protruded the outline of a 
long, low roof. For a time they studied the wall, 
seeking some moving figure, but seeing none. 
Under the cold moon the hard gray pile fronted 
the wilderness like a forgotten sepulcher guard¬ 
ing its dead. 

Toward it the hard-bitten little column ad¬ 
vanced, instinctively changing formation to a 
line of skirmishers. Each man picked his own 
way around tree or bush clump, but none fell be¬ 
hind or went far ahead of his comrades. At 
times they paused to listen and watch; then 
went on. 

Soon they stood under the old wall itself, look¬ 
ing along its length. Nowhere could they see an 
opening. For a hundred feet or more it ran 
straight north and south, then ended. Beyond 
rose the black mountains, looking down in in¬ 
sensate savagery at the line of stones taken 
from them by hands now mouldering and 
piled up to bar out whatever foes might come, 
and at the four lost men who, all chance of re¬ 
turn destroyed, stood under them and looked 
about. 

To the men themselves came a queer feeling 
that they were back in some former life, outside 
the walls of some medieval robber baron’s castle, 


THE END OF THE TRAIL 


247 


likely at any moment to be spied by mail-clad 
sentries above and riddled with long shafts or 
dragged in and thrown to rot in some noisome 
dungeon. Knowlton caught himself listening for 
the grind of steel-shod feet above, the clink of 
armor, the rattle of a sword. Then he smiled 
at his own folly. But the smile faded and his 
eyes widened. No martial sound came to him; 
but another sound did. 

Somewhere farther down, beyond the wall, a 
vaguely confused murmur arose: a noise which 
might have been caused by shuffling feet com¬ 
bined with low voices; a sound as if men, or pigs, 
or both, were moving sluggishly about. 

“Cripes! The dead guys are gittin’ up out o’ 
their graves!” breathed Tim. 

In truth, it seemed so. If living men moved 
on the other side of those stones, they had little 
energy. There was no calling out, no song or 
laugh; only a dead, brutish sound which neither 
increased nor died out of the air. 

McKay motioned along the wall and stole 
away. The others followed. Down almost to 
the end they passed, and there they paused again. 
From across the barrier that gruesome sound 
still came, more clearly now: grunting voices, 
bestial snores, the faint slither of feet passing 
about as if dragging in utter weariness. Some¬ 
thing else came over, too—a rank odor as of an 
unclean pen. 

The captain gauged the wall—a good twelve 


TIGER RIVER 


248 

feet high—as if meditating an attempt to look 
over by climbing on the shoulders of some one of 
his companions. But he decided otherwise and 
once more moved on, stopping again at the end, 
or what seemed the end, of the rock line. It 
proved to be a corner. 

Around that corner the wall receded for per¬ 
haps forty feet, then turned again and ran back 
to a sharp uplift of the ground. There it merged 
with the shadows and the rising earth. It looked 
like a passageway leading ,into some tunnel, 
which in turn might run back for many yards 
into the steep slopes beyond. The spies had 
little doubt that such was the case. 

The captain shook his head, signifying that 
further progress in this direction now would 
lead them nowhere. They retraced their steps. 
To the other end of the wall they passed, and 
around the corner they turned without recon- 
noitering. Then they stopped in their tracks. 

Drawn up in a close-ranked body, stolid and 
silent as if they had been patiently awaiting the 
whites, stood ten men. Each held a rifle. Each 
rifle was aimed at a white man’s breast. And 
each eye behind the gunsights glinted as coldly as 
that of a snake. 

They were Indians all. But they were not 
green men; not Jiveros; not men of the vanished 
Pachac. They were brutes; coppery brutes in 
human form. Though the lower parts of their 
faces were half hidden by the leveled rifles, their 


THE END OF THE TRAIL 


249 


low foreheads, beady eyes, and bestial expres¬ 
sions were clear enough in the moonlight. They 
were more merciless than animals. And they 
held the lives of the intruders in the crooks of 
their trigger fingers. 

Yet, after the first shock of surprise, the four 
looked them over coolly. One thing was very 
obvious—these were no dead men. They were 
alive, well fed, armed with repeating rifles of the 
universal .44 bore. The sight of those prosaic 
guns, threatening though they were, exerted a 
steadying rather than an alarming influence on 
the soldiers of fortune. Tim even grinned, 
though in a disgusted way. 

“Faith, gittin’ caught seems to be the best liT 
thing we do,” he remarked. “Outside o’ them 
Jiveros we caught on a fryin’ pan, we ain’t licked 
nobody since we come in here. If I ever git back 
home I ain’t goin’ to brag much about this trip. 
What’s the word, cap? Drop and shoot, or 
stick up our hands?” 

“S'tand fast.” Then, in Spanish, McKay ad¬ 
dressed the Indians. 

“Do not fear. We are not enemies. Put 
down your guns.” 

The guns remained leveled. One of the In¬ 
dians replied in a harsh growl. 

“Go within.” 

“Within what? Where?” 

“The gate.” 

The captain glanced along the wall. 


250 


TIGER RIVER 


“I see no gate.” 

“Go. You will find it.” 

He moved aside as he spoke, still covering 
McKay. The others likewise slipped aside. 

“We go.” 

And, with unhurried tread, they went. 
Flanked on one side by the wall, on the other by 
the ready guns, they filed along toward the in¬ 
visible gate. As they passed, the Indians swung 
in behind, muzzles pointing at the white men’s 
spines. 

Some distance beyond, a tree cast a deep, wide 
shadow on the wall. In that shadow the Ameri¬ 
cans found a stout gate of rough timbers, stand¬ 
ing ajar. Three more of the brute-faced aborig¬ 
ines, also armed with guns, stood there. These 
stepped in, swinging the gate wide enough to ad¬ 
mit two abreast. When brown men and white 
were all inside, the big barrier was bumped shut. 
Heavy bars thumped into place. 

The whites, looking rapidly about them, saw 
the front wall of the big house; a bell suspended 
from a stout tripod near at hand; and a sort of 
scaffolding running along the inside of the stock¬ 
ade walls, about four feet below the top. The 
house front was pierced by a few high and ex¬ 
tremely narrow windows—scarcely more than 
loop holes—and a wide doorway in which solid 
double doors stood slightly open. From the peak 
of the low-pitched roof jutted jagged stones 
which at one time probably had been a belfry, 


THE END OF THE TRAIL 251 

now ruined by some long-forgotten earth shock. 
The bell, hanging within the triangle formed by 
logs solidly braced in the hard-packed earth of 
the yard, was black with age. The scaffolding 
along the walls formed a narrow runway where 
men could pass in patrol or fight against 
enemies outside. If well manned, the place was 
virtually an impregnable fortress against any 
jungle foe. 

This much the four absorbed in their first sur¬ 
vey of their surroundings. Then their gaze 
riveted on the big door. 

Slowly that door swung farther open. Beyond 
it a face showed dimly in the shadow cast by the 
big tree outside. The. Indians looked toward 
that vague figure, and one of them spoke. 

“They are here,” he said. 

The figure stood motionless a moment. The 
peering Americans saw that it was not tall, and 
that against the gloomy background its face 
seemed white. Then they nearly dropped. The 
figure replied; and its voice, though clear, was 
soft and low—the voice of a woman. 

“It is well. They shall come in.” 

As if the words were a cue, light shone in the 
darkness. The doors swung wide. Prodded by 
the Indian, the amazed soldiers of fortune moved 
forward, staring at a slender, graceful woman, 
bare-armed, black-haired and red-lipped, gowned 
in clinging purple, who stood with head saucily 
tilted and smiled at the shaggy men who had 


252 


TIGER RIVER 


forced their way to the end of the long trail of 
the Tigre Yacu. Around her stood light-skinned 
Indian damsels, nearly nude, holding bare- 
flamed lights. 

Across the threshold passed the four, and 
down a bare corridor the bevy of girls and their 
mistress retreated before them. The Indian men 
remained outside, and one of them reached and 
swung the door shut. The lights passed into a 
side wall, and the white men followed. They 
found themselves in a big room hung about with 
the same purplish cloth worn by the woman, in 
the middle of which stood a massive table from 
whose top flashed yellow gleams as the lights 
moved. 

“Bienvenido! Welcome!” smiled the woman. 
“You have traveled far. Have you hunger and 
thirst?” 

The eyes of the four searched the room. No 
men lurked there. They relaxed, smiled in reply, 
and doffed their battered hats. 

“Thirst we have, senorita,” answered Knowl- 
ton. “A thirst that gnaws. But not hunger.” 

“It shall be quenched.” 

She made a sign, and the girls, who now had 
set their yellow lamps on little wall brackets, 
went out by another doorway. 

“Sit, senores,” added the mistress of the house, 
nodding toward a long padded couch. “Water 
shall be brought for bathing, and I myself shall 
prepare that which will banish weariness.” 


THE END OF THE TRAIL 253 

With another smile she disappeared through 
the other doorway. Still almost dumb with 
amazement, the men sat down on the couch, un¬ 
consciously gripping their guns, and staring all 
about. 

“Gee cripes!” breathed Tim. “Whaddye 
know about this? We come lookin’ for dead 
men, and we tumble into a harem!” 


CHAPTER XXIII 


CIRCE 

TT^OUR girls, bearing wide yellow basins, 
|l entered and crossed the room. Each 
stooped before one of the men, holding 
the bowl at the level of his knees. Restraining 
an impulse to snatch the vessels and drink the 
cool water in them, the travel-stained men laid 
their guns aside and immersed their hands. As 
they did so, each narrowly scanned the basins. 

“Gold!” was their conviction. 

The yellow metal could hardly be anything 
else. It certainly was not brass. The yellow 
lamps, too, and the gleaming things on the table 
—all must be gold. 

“Gee cripes!” Tim whispered again. “This 
place is a reg’lar mint!” 

“Looks like it,” agreed Knowlton. “First 
time I ever washed my face in gold, anyhow.” 

Running a hand down his face to squeeze the 
water from his beard, he reached with the other 
for a small towel hanging over an arm of the 
girl serving him. As he did so, she bent nearer 
and whispered something. 

The sibilant words meant nothing to him. 
Puzzled, he stared into her face. Then he 
blinked, rubbed his watery eyes, and stared again. 

254 


CIRCE 255 

He was looking into the brown eyes of one of 
the wives of Jose. 

A glance at the other girlish faces told him 
that they also were of the winsome daughters of 
Pachac. Not only that, but they were of the five 
whom the son of the Conquistadores had taken 
as his brides. Only one of the five was missing, 
and she must be among those now beyond the 
doorway. 

In the wavering lights, which did not fully 
illumine the room, the Americans had not pre¬ 
viously recognized the girls. For that matter, 
they had paid scant attention to them in their 
amazement at finding themselves amid such 
unexpected surroundings. But now a startled 
grunt from Tim, whose eye for feminine 
charms never remained blind long, showed 
that he, too, had realized who these girls 
were. McKay and Rand, after a glance at him, 
also looked more carefully at the faces so 
near theirs. Their lifted brows revealed their 
recognition. 

Knowlton’s girl whispered again. Again he 
could not understand. Her face fell, but she 
moved her head a little backward, toward the 
door where the purple woman had gone out. 
In her eyes was a plain warning against 
something. 

The blond man nodded to show that he com¬ 
prehended her effort to caution him, though un¬ 
aware of just what the effort signified. Then he 


256 TIGER RIVER 

toweled his face and gave her the wet cloth. She 
turned away. 

“Keep an eye peeled, fellows,” he muttered. 
“Something slippery around here. Can’t tell 
what’s in that next room, for instance.” 

“Wear your poker face,” advised McKay. 
“Don’t show that we know the girls. Maybe 
we’re not supposed to.” 

Then through that farther doorway came the 
fair-skinned woman in purple. 

Behind her advanced girls bearing a large 
steaming pot and several cups of the same lus¬ 
trous golden hue. Eying them keenly, the men 
saw that among them was the fifth bride of 
Jose. And, remembering that the chief of the 
white Indians had had nine daughters, and noting 
features of resemblance among all these girls, 
they concluded that every one of them was of 
the blood of Pachac. But each man kept out 
of his face any sign of recognition, or even of 
interest. 

They arose, as if in honor to their returning 
hostess. But in doing so they unobtrusively 
picked up their rifles and glanced beyond her to 
spy any furtive movement in the room beyond. 
No menace showed itself. The purple woman 
looked at their guns with an expression of 
amused contempt. 

“Have no fear, my friends,” she said. 
“Within these walls no guns are needed. Here 
are only rest and welcome after a long journey.” 


CIRCE 


257 


“Your men gave us a strange welcome,” Mc¬ 
Kay asserted. 

“Ah, but you then were outside the walls! In 
this wild land one must be on guard against all 
who come, until one knows them for friends. 
Of what country are you, Sehor Gold Hair?” 

Her long-lashed eyes had turned to Knowlton# 
whose tumbled hair shone under the light of a 
near-by lamp. 

“Of the United States of North America, 
senorita. We all are of the same land.” 

“So? I have never seen one like you,” she 
naively confessed. “Nor like this one whose 
hair is so red. These two,” nodding at McKay 
and Rand, “might be men of Spain. But come, 
let us quench the thirst with guayusa.” 

She turned toward the stout table, on which 
the great golden pot now had been placed. With 
another quick look toward the door beyond her, 
the men laid their rifles back on the couch and 
moved toward the steaming bowl. Deftly she 
dipped up cupfuls of the hot liquid and set them 
along the edge. After a bit of maneuvering, the 
four took positions along a bench beside the table, 
where they could watch doors and their hostess, 
too. And, though consumed by thirst, none lifted 
his cup just yet. 

They knew the guayusa tea well enough—an 
infusion from the leaves of a wild shrub found 
here and there in the upper Amazon country, 
which, like the yerba mate of Paraguay, ex- 


TIGER RIVER 


258 

hilarates the drinker and banishes weariness. 
They were fatigued enough and thirsty enough 
to consume cup after cup of it. But they were 
also on their guard against anything and every¬ 
thing, and they waited for her to drink first. 

“You do not like the guayusa, no?” she asked, 
dipping up a measure for herself. 

“It is hot,” Knowlton evaded. “And in my 
country it is the custom to await the pleasure of 
the hostess.” 

Her dark eyes smiled wisely at him. She lifted 
her cup, sipped at it, drank in little mouthfuls, 
set it down empty. 

“Of what are you afraid, Senor Gold Hair?” 
she mocked. “Should I let you pass my guards 
only to poison you?” 

The lieutenant flushed and raised his drink. 

“To you, senorita,” he bowed. “The most 
beautiful woman I have seen in many a long 
day.” 

Which was not quite so florid a compliment as 
it sounded. For many days he had seen no white 
women whatever. But she took it at its face 
value, and as he smiled and quaffed the stimulat¬ 
ing draft her eyes caressed him. 

“Oh boy!” Tim gurgled into his cup. “Ain’t 
he the bear-cat, though! Feed her a liT more 
taffy, looey, and she’ll be settin’ in yer lap.” 

McKay choked suddenly, spilling half his 
guayusa. Rand bit the edge of his cup to hold 
his face straight. Tim gurgled again and swal- 


CIRCE 


259 


lowed the tea in two gulps. Knowlton expressed 
a hope that he might speedily choke. 

The dark eyes watching them narrowed, and 
a glint of anger showed in them. Though the 
alien words meant nothing to her, the suppressed 
mirth among the men hinted at something un¬ 
complimentary—else why should it be sup¬ 
pressed? But she said nothing. She signed to 
one of the girls, who refilled her cup. 

For a minute or two all sat frankly looking 
at her. They saw that she was indubitably 
Spanish, of blood pure or nearly pure; that she 
was not altogether beautiful—the features were 
a trifle coarse—but far from ill-favored: of 
Castilian countenance, shapely form, and mature 
years—mature, that is, for the tropics; perhaps 
twenty-five. Her red lips, thin but pouting a 
little; her eyes, with a hint of passion in their 
depths; her languorous movements and her side¬ 
long glances—all were sensuous and sophisti¬ 
cated. Her dress, they now noticed, was only 
a sleeveless frock of llanchama bark cloth dyed 
with achote, ending at the knee, drawn tight at 
the waist by a broad girdle of the same material. 
And from that girdle, slanting a little forward, 
jutted the hilt of a poniard. 

In his mind each man labeled her: 
“Dangerous.” 

Yet there was no hint of danger in her man¬ 
ner as she now studied each man’s face in turn— 
and not only his face but the hardy frame be- 


26 o 


TIGER RIVER 


neath it. To three of those figures she gave 
fully as much attention as to eyes and jaws and 
expressions. Her gaze hovered a little curi¬ 
ously on Tim’s red hair and beard, but she 
scanned his muscular body with more interest 
than his wide countenance. On McKay’s stal¬ 
wart frame and Rand’s solid build she bestowed 
thoughtful looks. But on Knowlton’s thick, un¬ 
cut yellow hair, golden beard, and twinkling 
blue eyes her gaze lingered; and under her lashes 
burned a soft glow of approval and allure. 

“Ye’ve started somethin’, looey,” murmured 
Tim, sotto voce. “Us three guys are jest hunks 
o’ beef, but li’l Angel-Face Knowlton is the candy 
kid.” 

“Shut up, you poor fish!” requested the 
badgered man. Then he gulped his second cup 
of guayusa, noting, as he did so, that the woman 
now was eying the red-haired man in evident dis¬ 
like. Tim was rapidly putting himself out of 
favor. 

After another wordless minute or so of tea 
drinking, the woman turned her gaze again to 
Knowlton. 

“What do you seek here?” she asked abruptly. 

Involuntarily each man’s glance darted to the 
great gold pot on the table. She threw back her 
head and laughed in. a scornful way. 

“You come for gold, yes? I knew it must be 
so. For that yellow trash men dare all. And 
when they have it, what then? 


CIRCE 


261 

“Where gold is, there death is also. So my 
fathers have learned. Many years ago they 
found gold here. They fought the wild men, 
they made their captives build these walls, they 
mined the gold—and what then? 

“The earth shook and the mountains broke 
and slid. The way in and out of this gulf closed. 
There was no escape except the long way down 
the Tigre, through savages who let no man pass. 
So my fathers stayed here with their gold, which 
was worth nothing—what is gold in such a place 
as this? 

“Still they mined and got more gold, against 
the day when another temblor should open a 
new way out. It came, the terrible earth-shak¬ 
ing—and did it open a way? No! It crushed 
the mines, destroyed the men in them, buried 
even the gold which my fathers had taken out 
and stored in a walled-up cave. And so they 
died, and I alone am left—Flora Almagro, last 
of the lighting family that would tear wealth 
from the savage mountains of the Pastassa. 

“I, and Indians, and tumbling walls, and a few 
paltry utensils which my fathers made from their 
gold—that is all. But the gold is in these moun¬ 
tains round about. Dig, senores, dig! Ha, ha, 
ha! In twenty years of digging you may reach 
that wdiich my fathers reached—and then be 
crushed like them!” 

Again she laughed—a mocking laugh with a 
wild note in it. 


262 


TIGER RIVER 


“Four lifetimes of fighting man and beast and 
jungle and devil-rock—and this to show for itl” 
she shrilled, with a contemptuous wave toward 
golden cups and bowls and lamps. “If you would 
find gold and keep it, friends, bring in an army— 
bring in cannon—blow off the tops of these moun¬ 
tains until they can no longer fall—then perhaps, 
if the jungle men will let you, you can pick up 
your treasure in safety.” 

None answered. All thought of the slight 
earth shock only a few hours past, of the fall of 
the cliff and the destruction of the trail. Her 
words rang true. And if they were true, Fate 
had tricked them into a barren trap indeed. 

Thoughtfully they drained their cups a third 
time. The potent stimulant already had routed 
their fatigue, and now their minds were leaping 
nimbly from one thing to another—the quake, 
the mysterious green men above, the obvious 
servitude of the Pachac girls, the sinister ab¬ 
sence of the rest of the tribe and of Jose—a 
dozen other things in incoherent sequence, all of 
which perplexed and disturbed them. At length 
McKay bluntly asked: 

“How did you know we were coming?” 

The suddenness of the query did not disturb 
her. Widening her eyes in mock innocence, she 
returned: “The approach of travelers always is 
known. The little parrots of the forest sent the 
word.” 

“Ah. Green parrots, no doubt.” 


CIRCE 263 

“All parrots here are green, Senor Black 
Beard,” was her laughing retort. 

“So. And they drum with their wings to send 
their news.” 

At that her smile vanished. Involuntarily 
her hand darted to her dagger hilt, and she threw 
a look toward the outer door. The gesture, the 
look, were strikingly similar to the fearful atti¬ 
tudes of the green men on hearing the distant 
drums. 

“Valgame Dios! Those drums!” she 
breathed. Then her head turned back and lifted 
again. “But no, you have it -wrong. You have 
heard drums, yes ? They are drums of the men 
who cut off the head and make it small—the 
hunters of the heads of men and the bodies of 
women—the old enemies of my fathers. Their 
land is beyond the mountains to the west, but 
they come at times—many of their bones lie in 
this gulf, where they died in fight. We have 
lived only because they came in scattered raid¬ 
ing bands. If ever they come in an army-” 

Her hand tightened on the hilt. With another 
swift change she laughed out, the same wild 
laugh as before. 

“They may capture the head of me, but that 
is all!” she vowed. “Flora Almagro never goes 
a captive to the hut of an Indian—not while 
good steel can reach her heart! But—caramba! 
let us forget them. To-morrow death may 
come, but to-night let us live! Now that the 



TIGER RIVER 


264 

guayusa has rested you, there is a stronger draft 
of friendship for strong men who have dared the 
Tigre and come to me here.” 

She signed again to the girls, who had been 
standing mute behind her. Three of them turned 
toward the rear room. Among those who stayed 
was the one who had attempted to convey a 
warning to Knowlton. Now she looked straight 
at him and again tried, by furtive nods at her 
mistress, to caution him. Puzzled, he stared 
back at her. 

“Why do you look so at my maidens?” de¬ 
manded Flora Almagro. Her eyes were nar¬ 
rowed again, and she watched Knowlton as if 
trying to read his thoughts. 

“I was wondering, Senorita Flora,” he coolly 
replied, “how, in this wild place, you obtained 
such handsome slaves. For Indians, they are 
almost beautiful.” 

His tone implied that they were not to be com¬ 
pared in beauty with their mistress. The subtle 
flattery was not lost. She smiled again. But 
her eyes still searched his. 

“You look as if you thought you knew them, 
senor.” 

“One of them resembles a girl I saw months 
ago, far up the Marahon,” he lied serenely. “But 
she cannot be the same. That one was taller.” 

For a moment longer she studied him. He 
carefully preserved his “poker face.” The sus¬ 
picion faded from her eyes. 


CIRCE 


265 

“But no, Senor Gold Hair. All of these have 
been with me for years. They are of the people 
who served my fathers. Now they shall 
serve-” 

A stumble and a slight confusion at the door 
halted her. The three girls were returning, 
bearing another great golden bowl. One of them 
had tripped, and all three were struggling to 
keep the heavy vessel from falling. From it 
splashed a reddish liquor. 

A flash of anger twisted the face of Flora. 
Her dagger leaped out, and with a feline spring 
she darted at the trio. 

“Pigs! Lizards! She-dogs!” she screamed. 
“Have care! If you drop the wine, clumsy 
beasts, you shall feel the point of this!” 

The three caught their balance, steadied the 
bowl, and bore it dripping to the table. The 
purple-clad woman, her breast still heaving with 
fury, looked down at what had been spilled, spun 
toward the table, her poniard half raised—and 
caught the cool stare of four pairs of American 
eyes. After a silent minute she slipped the 
weapon back into her girdle and laughed in a 
forced way. 

“I forget myself,” she said. “But this wine, 
sehores—it is old, precious. To see it cast on 
the floor by footless fools—it is too much. But 
now it is safe. Let us drink deep—of the wine 
of life—and love!” 

With the last words her eyes burned deep 



266 


TIGER RIVER 


into those of Senor Gold Hair, whom she had 
plainly selected as recipient for other favors to 
come. 

“Hm! This is getting a bit thick,” thought 
the blond man. “But the evening’s young yet, 
and if she drinks enough she may blab a lot of 
interesting things. On with the dance!” 

Wherefore he smiled blandly at the sehorita, 
accepted the cup tendered him, and gazed ap¬ 
preciatively at the fragrant contents. Red wine 
in a cup of gold, tendered by a seductive woman 
in a room hung with purple and lit by golden 
lamps, with nude maidens at hand to pour new 
drafts—here in a jungle chasm into which he and 
his comrades had been driven by green-skinned 
creatures at the points of poisoned spears! It 
seemed an impossible dream, from which he soon 
must awake to find himself again in a gloomy 
pole-and-palm camp surrounded by avid tigres. 
Glancing at McKay, he found the same feeling 
reflected in the gray eyes contemplating the 
scene. 

“You have not yet told me your names, my 
friends,” the last of the Almagros reminded 
them. “Now let us drink to each of my guests 
in turn, and then you shall tell me of your travels, 
yes? To-morrow, if my poor hospitality has 
pleased you, we shall talk more seriously—of 
those things which are to come. But now-” 

She nodded and lifted her cup to Senor Gold 
Hair, who promptly arose. 



CIRCE 


267 

“My name, Senorita Flora, is Meredith 
Knowlton, an humble member of this party com¬ 
manded by-” 

He paused. Behind their mistress’ back two 
of the Pachac girls were frantically signaling at 
him. This time there was no chance of mis¬ 
understanding. They were pointing at his cup 
and shaking their heads: warning him not to 
drink of it. 

“-commanded by El Capitan Roderick 

McKay,” the lieutenant went on, “the Caballero 
seated at my right-—” 

There he let the cup slip from his fingers and 
drop. 

“Don’t drink, fellows!” he snapped in Eng¬ 
lish. “It’s doped!” 

“By cripes, and there’s a row outside!” yelped 
Tim. “Hear it?” 

A low muttering sound beyond the house walls 
flared into a snarling roar of hatred. Sharp 
yells-—a bumping, splintering sound—a sudden 
roar of gunshots. With a bound the men threw 
themselves on their rifles. 





CHAPTER XXIV 

LOST SOULS 


o 


SANTO DIOS!” screamed Flora Al- 
magro. “Las bestias—the beasts are 
out!” 

If the fighting creatures outside were animals, 
then they were animals with the voices of men. 
They yelled, screeched, howled in a bedlam of 
blows and crashes punctuated by the recurrent 
rifle shots. Yet beneath the human voices 
sounded a ferocious undertone of bestial grunts 
and snarls ho* fearsome, inarticulate growl more 
appalling than the death shrieks momentarily 
scaling high and breaking off short. 

“Where away, cap?” called Tim, gun cocked 
and pistol loosened for a quick draw. 

“Stay here!” snapped McKay. “Back behind 
the table! Heave it over!” 

“That’s the stuff,” approved Knowlton, glanc¬ 
ing at the high wall slits. From the outside no 
man could shoot through those openings, nor 
could any creature larger than a house cat 
squeeze in at them. With the wall at their backs, 
the massive table as a bulwark, and only two 
entrances, they could hold this strong room 
against all comers until their ammunition ran 
out—and even longer, with their machetes. 

268 


LOST SOULS 


269 

They leaped around the table, tugged at one 
edge, swung it up and let its heavy top slam down 
with a crushing thump. The gold bowl and cups 
clanged on the stone floor, the liquor splashing 
on the purple dress of the woman and the bare 
legs of the girls. 

“Here !’’ ordered the captain, pointing. Flora, 
her poniard gleaming, dashed around the table 
and sought to get behind them. The Indian 
girls followed with less speed—in fact, they 
seemed unafraid and kept looking at the doors. 

“No, madam,” McKay said darkly. “You do 
not stand at our backs with that knife. Over 
there, if you please—farther along.” 

“Cristo!” she spat. “You think me an 
assassin? You would let them kill fhe-” 

“We let no man kill you. But we know what 
was in the wine !” 

It was a snap shot, but it scored. Her face 
blanched, her eyes and mouth opened, and she 
slipped away from him, poniard up in a position 
of defense. 

“Over there!” he repeated inexorably, point¬ 
ing again. “And stay there!” 

Several feet away, still staring at his bleak 
face, she stopped where he had designated: pro¬ 
tected by the upturned table, but beyond reach 
of any of her defenders. Still farther on, the 
daughters of Pachac clustered well away from 
her, and in their faces now plainly showed sullen 
hatred of the woman they had served. 



270 


TIGER RIVER 


“Lights out along here!” commanded Mc¬ 
Kay, knocking a lamp from its bracket with his 
rifle muzzle. The others threw the lights near¬ 
est them to the floor and trampled on the oil 
which splashed out, killing the flame. That side 
of the room now was very dim, while the two 
entrances were well illumined. 

Two nude figures came slipping in at the 
farther doorway. Four rifles darted to an aim. 
But they sank without a shot. The pair were 
women—daughters of Pachac. 

At sight of them Flora Almagro hissed like 
a cat. 

“You devils!” she screamed. “You, you freed 
the beasts! You opened the gates! When they 
are driven back I kill you!” 

Whether the girls understood the Spanish 
words or not, they evidently recognized the 
accusation and cared nothing for the threat. 
Their lips curled and their heads lifted in a 
^defiant gesture worthy of their maddened mis¬ 
tress herself. Tauntingly one pointed to¬ 
ward the infernal tumult outside. The other 
flashed her teeth in a triumphant smile. 
Obviously they were not only guilty but proud 
of it. 

Infuriated by their insolence, she sprang at 
them with dagger uplifted, forgetful of the 
shoulder-high table top intervening. She collided 
with the solid barrier so forcibly that the blow 
crumpled her gasping to the floor. The poniard 


LOST SOULS 


271 


fell from her hand. The Indian girls near her 
surged forward. 

But, sensing the menace from those whom so 
Recently she had threatened, she closed a hand 
over the weapon and lifted its point against 
them. They paused, hesitated, hung back. 
Holding them off with gleaming blade and blaz¬ 
ing eyes, she hitched back to the wall and leaned 
against it, struggling to regain her breath. 

Outside the conflict was advancing under the 
unglassed slits serving as windows, ventilators, 
and loop holes. The gunshots had dwindled to 
an occasional blunt roar, and those inside heard 
more clearly the impacts of blows, the gasping 
grunts of close-locked antagonists, the moans of 
wounded and dying. Thus far no man had en¬ 
tered the house. A stubborn hand-to-hand battle 
evidently was going on, with one side slowly 
gaining ground. Through the turmoil sounded 
a hoarse voice exhorting: 

“At them, camaradas! Over them, esclavos! 
Kill! Kill! Butcher the accursed torturers! 
Strike! Bite ! Crush their skulls! Kill! 
Kill!” 

Rand, after scanning the hollow embrasure of 
a slit above him, clambered up to its firing-step 
and leaned into the opening, peering down. Out 
there in the moonlight he saw wrenching, wrest¬ 
ling figures heaving about in mortal combat— 
naked arms and knotted fists clutching clubs, ris¬ 
ing and battering down—shaggy heads and hulk- 


272 


TIGER RIVER 


ing shoulders hurling themselves past at some 
foe just beyond—distorted, red-smeared faces 
falling backward in death—the flare of an ex¬ 
ploding rifle. Over the fighting forms hung a 
haze of dust and powder smoke, and from them 
rose the rank odor of bodies long unwa'shed. Yet, 
despite the blur, despite the animal smell, the 
peering man in the wall was sure some of those 
battling bodies were white. 

This was no Jivero attack. It was an eruption 
within the walls of the fortress itself. In Rand’s 
mind burned the word he had just heard from 
the throat of that unseen leader—“esclavos”— 
slaves. 

It came again, from almost under him: that 
savage voice, that same word. 

“Hah! El capataz de esclavos—the slave 
driver—the foreman! Welcome, senor—wel¬ 
come to death and hell!” 

Back into Rand’s range of vision reeled a 
stocky, brutal-visaged Indian, a rifle clutched 
aloft in his fists. He struck downward. The 
gun was torn from his grip. A long, lean white 
body, topped by a black-bearded face split in a 
grin of hate, leaped into view, swinging down 
the captured gun with terrific power. The 
crunching thud of the blow sounded above the 
rest of the tumult. The Indian capataz col¬ 
lapsed, his head a red ruin. 

“Hah!” croaked the deadly voice again. “I 
have long owed you that blow, you fiend—how 


LOST SOULS 


273 


do you like it? On, camaradas! They break! 
On to the doors!” 

In another bound he was gone. So swift had 
been his movement that the watcher’s brain re¬ 
tained only a fleeting memory of black hair and 
grinning teeth. Before his eyes now passed a 
surging hurlyburly of other black heads, upshoot- 
ing arms, lurching bodies- 

“Dave !” crackled McKay’s voice. 

At the same instant came a struggling, thump¬ 
ing noise from the outer door. Rand jumped 
down and took his place in the line. 

Bump—bump—bump—a grinding creak— 
another struggling sound. Then that hoarse 
voice again. 

“So, you pig! You would block the door, 
hah? You hug the wood, hah? Then hang 
your brains on it to show your love for it!” 

Another bump, followed by the thud of a fall¬ 
ing body. Hoarse breathing, the slap of bare 
feet in the corridor, and a triumphant yell. 

“Now for that hell-cat who steals the brains 
of men! Let her drink her own devil-brew 
and- Por Dios, what is this?” 

Into the room bounded the lean killer of the 
capataz de esclavos, followed close by his naked 
fighting mates. At sight of the upturned table, 
the four grim figures behind it, and the gun 
muzzles grinning at him, he halted in his tracks. 
Slit-eyed he peered into the dimness along that 
farther wall, and his jaw dropped. At the same 




274 


TIGER RIVER 


instant four trigger fingers slacked their tension, 
and across the faces of the Americans darted 
the light of recognition. 

“Begorry, it’s Hozy!” rumbled Tim. 

Jose it was. But not the same Jose whom 
they had last seen. He was naked as any wild 
man of the jungle: naked as the men pressing 
in at his back, none of whom had a rag of 
clothing save a narrow loin clout. His black 
hair and beard, which he had always kept 
scrupulously clean, now were dingy and matted 
with dirt, and half his face was smeared red 
from a gash on his forehead. But, despite his 
dirt and blood, notwithstanding his loss of 
clothing and kerchief and machete and knife, 
there was no mistaking his hawk face and his 
tigerish poise. And behind him showed the 
saturnine countenance of Pachac, his adopted 
father. 

“Ho! It is the Senor Tim and- But 

quick, my friends, tell me! You have not eaten 
food given you by that woman Almagro—where 
is that foul corrupter?—you have not drunk of 
her cheer? Quick, senores, before it becomes 
too late!” 

“Only some guayusa,” answered Knowlton. 
“Make that gang of yours keep back!” 

Without turning his head, Jose ripped out 
commands in Spanish and some Indian tongue. 
The men behind, who had been shoving to get 
past, stood still. 



LOST SOULS 


275 


‘‘And you feel alert, amigos? You feel no 
heaviness coming on you? No?” 

“No.” 

“Bueno! Then you are safe. But lower the 
guns, friends—these are no enemies of yours. 
They are poor creatures much abused, who at 
last break free from the vilest slavery ever laid 
on men. All they now seek is the cruel cat who 
made them what they are. Si, and I, too, hunt 
her! Where is she?” 

Knowlton, glancing sidelong toward Flora, 
found her still on the floor below the table top. 
But she was no longer leaning against the wall. 
Crouching, her poniard still lifted and menacing, 
she was creeping closer to the wooden bulwark 
between her and her foes, hiding from them and 
darting looks here and there like a cornered 
wild thing seeking a line of escape and finding 
none. 

“Why?” curtly demanded McKay. 

“Why?” echoed the naked outlaw, his voice 
strident. “Why? Use your eyes, Capitan Mc¬ 
Kay, and see! See what you, too, would have 
been in another day!” 

He turned on his heel and grunted mono¬ 
syllables at those behind. Then he walked be¬ 
fore them to the middle of the room, eyed the 
still ready rifles and the hard faces above them, 
laughed harshly, and drew an imaginary dead¬ 
line with one extended toe. Turning again, he 
extended his arms sidewise as .a sign to his fol- 


TIGER RIVER 


276 

lowers that none should advance beyond that 
line. Over one shoulder he jeered: 

“Look at them, capitan—and see yourself in 
them! Are they not handsome?” 

The captain and his companions looked. They 
saw men whom they recognized as members of 
the band of Pachac. They saw others, both 
white and brown, whose faces were new. And in 
those visages they found something that sent a 
chill crawling up their backs. 

Many of those faces still were working with 
blood lust, many of the savage eyes were hot with 
unquenched thirst for revenge. But they were 
brutish, those countenances—the faces of men 
debased; and the eyes were those of animals— 
of dogs, of pigs, but not of men. Some of them 
were grimacing like caged lions; some grinned 
without mirth; more were sullen, sodden; and 
all, or nearly all, were well-nigh empty of human 
intelligence. Behind those leering masks dwelt 
darkened minds which responded to the com¬ 
mands of Jose only as the mentalities of broken 
beasts respond to the crack of a whip. 

“Bestias,” the woman had called them; andT 
“bestias” they were. For that Spanish word 
means, not only “beast,” but “idiot.” These 
men were both. 

Nor was that all. On the bare bodies shifting 
about were welts of slave whips—not only welts, 
but cruel scars years old. And among them 
moved some which stepped jerkily, as if partly 


LOST SOULS 


277 

crippled. As those short-stepping men came to 
the edge, where the lights struck them fair, the 
reason for their grotesque gait was revealed. 
Like Rafael Pardo, who had stumbled into 
Iquitos with madman’s gold; like the unknown 
mestizo speared in the back on the ridge trail, 
those men were maimed—their toes amputated. 
And each of the cripples was white. 

“Look at them!” Jose mocked again. “Look 
at the missing men of the Tigre Yacu! Here 
they are, all but those who have died by torture 
and suicide and the fight this night. Look at the 
faces of men who were as brave and quick of wit 
as any of you senores! Look at the bodies that 
dared all hardships, to find such a fate! Look at 
the feet that carried them through savages and 
tigres and snakes—to this! Hah! And ask again 
why we hunt the evil woman who did this thing!” 

Once more he faced the four who had been 
his partners. His voice sank to a low, deadly 
level. His eyes roved from man to man, glitter¬ 
ing with ruthless determination. 

“Senores, you have been my friends. All— 
(except perhaps you, McKay—still are my 
friends, if you wish. But we will have that 
woman, whether you protect her or not. If you 
try to block us we fight—and you die. In spite 
of your guns, your pistols, your many bullets, 
your steel—you die. We are too many and too 
near, and you cannot get us all before you go 
under. And if you die so, you die as fools. 


TIGER RIVER 


278 

“I cannot hold these tortured men from their 
vengeance on her if I would. And I will not try. 
We will avenge ourselves, and we will do it now. 
Decide quickly what you will do.” 

Every man of the four knew he spoke the cold 
truth. If his implacable tone had not driven 
home his inflexible decision, the sight of those 
lowering faces behind him would have confirmed 
it to the last degree. Yet the woman was a 
woman; they were white men; and they would 
not hand over any woman, no matter what she 
might have done, to such a mob as that. 

There was a tense pause. Then the outlaw’s 
mouth twisted in a mirthless smile. He shifted 
his gaze toward his wives and their sisters, 
bunched behind the table and watching the parley 
without fear but with spellbound interest. He 
studied the gap between them and Knowlton, 
who was Number Four in the defensive line. He 
glanced at the girls. In answer to his unspoken 
question, one of them pointed downward at the 
hidden woman. 

“So!” he said. “She is there, hiding her cow¬ 
ardly body, as I thought. Shoot if you will, you 
who were my friends. I go to whisper sweet 
words in her ear.” 

He dropped the rifle captured from the cap- 
ataz, which he had been holding as a club. 
Empty-handed, he strode toward the spot where 
the woman crouched. 

But he had no need to lean over the bulwark 


LOST SOULS 


279 

and look for her. As he lifted a foot for the last 
step she sprang up. 

“Si! I am here, pig!” she screamed. “Take 
me—and take this with me!” 

Like a striking snake she threw herself at him. 
Her poniard thrust for his throat. 

Then it was that the outlaw’s quickness, which 
more than once in the past had preserved his 
life, saved him once more. Swift as was her stab, 
his recoil was a shade swifter. In one backward 
leap he was four feet away, grinning like a snarl¬ 
ing jungle cat. She fell forward on the upturned 
table edge, balked by the wood wall that had hid¬ 
den her. 

But hardly had she touched it when, with 
another lightning movement, she threw herself 
up and back on her feet. Her eyes blazed with 
insane fires. 

“Live, then, animal!” she shrieked. “Here is 
one well-beloved, who goes to death with me!” 

Like a flash she sprang at Knowlton, her Senor 
Gold Hair. Her upraised dagger darted for his 
heart. 

“Come, my golden one-” she panted as 

she struck. 

Instinctively the lieutenant sidestepped and 
snapped his rifle upward in a parry. The barrel 
caught her wrist and blocked its slanting swoop. 
In the next flashing instant she was seized from 
behind and hurled down. 

The wives of Jose, daughters of a fighting 



28 o 


TIGER RIVER 


chief who belted his waist with the hair of his 
foes, had leaped. Maddened by the stab at their 
man, they were jumping forward even as she 
turned to Knowlton. Now they were on her like 
tigresses, tearing at her face, twisting the poniard 
from her hand. Screams of hate echoed in the 
room. 

As Jose and his band hurled themselves at the 
table, as the Americans surged forward, some¬ 
thing bright and keen rose out of the knot of 
struggling women. Like a lightning flash it fell. 

Slowly, still quivering with rage, the daughters 
of Pachac arose and stepped back. 

Flora, the last of the Almagros, the jungle 
Circe who changed men to beasts with her ter¬ 
rible drink, the enslaver of the missing men of 
the Tigre Yacu, lay still, her own dagger buried 
to the hilt in her breast. 


CHAPTER XXV 

THE DEVIL’S BREW 

F OR a long minute the big room of purple 
and gold was still. In the silence the 
only sounds were the breathing of men 
and the soft flutter of flames blown about in the 
gold lamps by a breeze stealing in at the loop 
holes. 

Then three groups again became conscious of 
one another. The Americans looked up at the 
Indian girls whose explosion of fury had swept 
their tyrant into death. Then both men and 
women faced toward the staring creatures now 
hanging over the edge of the table. 

Vague though the minds of those lost men 
might be, they had no difficulty in grasping what 
they saw. Violent death being as old as life 
itself, perception and understanding of it is in¬ 
stinctive in all creatures. And these men still 
possessed eyes to see and instinct to interpret. 
Gazing down at the motionless figure, the 
blanched face, and the sinister handle jutting 
from the still bosom, they gradually drew back 
and let their clouded eyes rove among the gold 
vessels bestrewing the floor. The fight was done, 
the enemy dead, and their groping brains already 
were forgetful of it all. 


282 


TIGER RIVER 


One among them, besides Jose, seemed more 
alert—grim old Pachac, whose gaze rested 
watchfully on the Americans. Yet his face was 
hard set, as if it were an effort to concentrate 
his attention and hold it unwavering. The blight 
on the minds of the rest evidently had touched 
his also, but lightly. Among the whole crew the 
only one retaining full mental vigor was the in¬ 
domitable son of the Conquistadores, Jose 
Martinez. 

Now that outlaw did a strange thing. Over 
the body of the woman whom he had just sought 
in implacable vengefulness, over the poniard 
which had licked out at his throat a few minutes 
ago, he made the sign of the cross. 

“Sea como Dios quiera,” he said soberly. “As 
God wills, so let it be.” 

But there was no hint of regret or forgiveness 
in his tone, or in the face he turned first to his 
followers and then to his erstwhile partners of 
the Tigre Yacu. 

The Americans had let their guns sink while 
they looked down on the woman. They did not 
lift them again. With the butts grounded, they 
looked pityingly at the hulking wrecks of man¬ 
hood beyond the barrier. 

Even McKay’s iron face showed his feeling 
for those poor creatures, tortured, maimed, 
darkened in mind. For the moment he had for¬ 
gotten Jose. And Jose, studying him, suddenly 
stepped toward him. 


THE DEVIL’S BREW 283 

“Capitan,” he said impulsively, “I have been 
a hot-headed fool.” 

McKay’s gray eyes met his. McKay’s set 
mouth softened. 

“And I, Jose, have been a bull-headed 
jackass.” 

Their right hands shot across the barrier and 
gripped hard. 

“That is a queer animal, capitan—a burro 
with a bull head,” grinned the Peruvian. “And 
it has no right to live. So let it not come between 
us again.” 

“It won’t.” 

The hands parted. Both men looked again 
at the human herd, and down at the quiet woman 
on the floor. 

“Does this end it, Jose?” asked Rand, nod¬ 
ding down at her. 

“This ends it, comrades. Unless some of 
those slave-driving Indies outside escaped—and 
I do not think it—r-this whole nest of devils is 
cleaned. Now we have more cleaning to do: to 
clean this room and the yard and ourselves. 
Whether we can clean the minds of these poor 
people I do not know, but we can clean our 
bodies, and it shall be done. Then there will be 
a tale to tell.” 

“Then let’s be at it,” said Knowlton, wrinkling 
his nose at the rank smell filling the room. “You 
clean up outside and we’ll fix up here. And for 
humanity’s sake give this crowd a bath.” 


TIGER RIVER 


284 

“It is not their fault, Senor Knowlton. Wait 
until you see the sty they were forced to herd in, 
poor devils! Si, and I with them—I am one of 
them, except that my brain is clear. And that 
it is clear I owe not to myself but to Huarma, one 
of my brides—the tallest one, yonder. But of 
that you shall hear later.” 

He touched Pachac on the shoulder and mut¬ 
tered something. The chief’s face relaxed, as 
if It were a relief to have no longer to try to 
think, and he turned docilely to follow the lead 
of his stalwart foster-son. Jose’s voice began to 
snap in commands, and his hand pointed toward 
the corridor. At once the listless, aimless crowd 
became alive and began to press out of the room. 
The Peruvian followed them up, rounding up 
stragglers, knocking a gold cup out of one man’s 
hand, shaking to his feet another who had lain 
down on the floor and closed his eyes. Last of 
all, he and Pachac passed out, side by side. 

The Indian girls had drawn away from the 
table now and stood grouped at the rear door¬ 
way, seeming a little afraid of the bearded men 
but not in the least awed by the realization of 
what they had done to their mistress. The 
Americans gave them no further attention. 

Leaning their guns against the wall, they 
moved out the table and swung it back on its 
legs. Rand and Tim stooped and lifted the 
quiet form from the floor. Up on the board they 
laid her, and just below the hilt of the poniard 


THE DEVIL’S BREW 


285 

they crossed the hands which had sought to 
wield it in death strokes when, brought to bay by 
the beasts she had made, she thought to take 
with her the leader of the pack or the stranger 
on whom her sensuous fancy had settled. 

Then, moving about the room, the four 
gathered up the scattered cups and ornaments 
and the big bowl which, with its venomed liquor, 
had been thrown over by the upturning of the 
table. These they placed around her, the bowl 
inverted at her head, the cups and heavy orna¬ 
ments down the sides in gleaming array. When 
this was done they pulled from the wall a long 
section of the achote-dyed hangings, and this they 
stretched along over the table top. Then they 
picked up their rifles and moved over toward 
the door. 

What they could do they had done. On the 
dim side of the room the last of the Almagros 
now rested under a purple shroud, surrounded 
by the gold with which she had sought to be¬ 
tray four more men into hopeless misery worse 
than death. And the men, keenly alert, were 
masters of her house and about to explore its 
secrets. 

McKay paused and glanced around. 

“Better leave one man here,” he decided. 

“What for?” wondered Knowlton. “Nothing 
to guard against in this room.” 

“Maybe. But Indians are Indians—a knife 
is a knife—gold is gold.” 


286 


TIGER RIVER 


Rand nodded. The girls still stood as if wait¬ 
ing for them to withdraw. And the captain was 
determined that there should be no pilfering 
from that shrouded table. 

“I’ll stay,” he volunteered. “Go ahead.” 

He stepped back to the couch and sat down. 
The others lifted lamps from the brackets and 
went out. 

In the corridor they found the big double 
entrance door standing wide, gaping vacantly at 
the moonlit yard, whence sounded the shuffle of 
bare feet and occasional orders from Jose. 
Along the passage other doors, all closed, showed 
in the soft lamplight. Nowhere was any stair¬ 
case. The living quarters in this broad, low 
house were all on one floor. 

McKay flung open the nearest door, advanced 
his lamp, and looked around; Then he stepped 
back. 

“This is her room,” he said. “Bring her in 
here.” 

The other pair complied. Back to the table 
they went, and slowly they returned, bearing 
with them the shrouded figure. While the cap¬ 
tain lighted the way they took her to a great 
canopied bed and laid her down. Then they 
drew the purple curtains and left her in her last 
sleep. 

Though they glanced around the room, they 
did not linger. Their roving eyes took in the 
lines of the high bed, various massive articles of 


THE DEVIL’S BREW 287 

furniture evidently built from some cabinet wood 
cut in the surrounding jungle, a number of old 
tapestries about the walls, and numerous gold 
ornaments carelessly strewn about on stands and 
drawer chests. There was no sign of occupancy 
of the room by any person other than the woman 
who now lay there. 

Passing out, they shut the door firmly behind 
them and looked steadily at the Indian girls, 
who had come into the corridor. Then McKay 
addressed Rand, who had followed them. 

“All right, Dave. Come along. This shut 
door is all the guard needed here.” 

He judged rightly. As he and his companions 
turned down the hall, the girls moved to the 
outer entrance. Covet the shining trinkets 
though they might, they would not venture to 
open that portal beyond which waited darkness 
and death. 

From room to room the men worked their 
way, wrestling with doors which stubbornly re¬ 
sisted, though none had a lock to hold it barred 
against inspection. Each time, after shoving and 
prying the wooden barrier open, they found that 
the difficulty was due to the sagging or warping 
of the door, indicating long disuse. And each 
time when they penetrated beyond it they found 
the room musty and dingy, its furnishings 
mouldy, and its weapons—for there were old 
weapons in some of them—coated thick with rust 
and spider webs. Bats veered out into the corri- 


288 


TIGER RIVER 


dor or swirled around the walls, and countless 
shells of long-dead beetles and other insects 
crackled under foot. Everything told the same 
tale: here once had lived a large family which 
now was gone. 

Not all the rooms, however, were so hard of 
access or filled with decay. A few showed signs 
of fairly recent tenancy, and one wide chamber 
obviously formed the quarters of the daughters 
of Pachac. Except this one, however, none gave 
indications that it was still being used for sleep¬ 
ing purposes. The others seemed to be occa¬ 
sional guest rooms. The eyes of the explorers 
narrowed as they surmised where the “guests” 
had gone. 

At length they found themselves in a lighted 
room undoubtedly used as the kitchen. There, 
among other things, they found the gold bowl 
which still held guayusa, now cooled, and a long 
shelf filled with tall square-sided clay bottles, 
tightly corked with wooden plugs. One of these 
had been taken from the shelf and stood beside 
the bowl. Lifting and shaking it, Rand heard 
the telltale gurgle showing that some of its con¬ 
tents had been poured out. Its plug came out 
easily—in fact, it still was damp. He poured 
some of the liquid into one hand. 

“Looks like tea,” he said. 

“Sleep tea, undoubtedly,” Knowlton suggested. 

“Yeah,” agreed Tim. “That there’s the 
knockout stuff that kills yer brains, I bet. Gee, 


THE DEVIL’S BREW 289 

lookit the line-up of it on the shelf, will ye? 
Looks like a jungle blind-tiger, with the square- 
face bottles and all. She kept enough on hand 
to make a hundred idjuts a day, if it works 
quick .’ 1 

“Must work quick,” McKay declared. 
“Pachac’s people haven’t been here long. And 
look at them now.” 

“Wonder what became of the women and chil¬ 
dren,” said Rand. “We’ve seen only men.” 

“I’m wondering about quite a number of 
things,” added Knowlton. “Jose will straighten 
things up, perhaps. Come on, let’s find him.” 

Passing through a smaller room, which seemed 
to have been recently used for lounging and din¬ 
ing, they entered again the great main hall where 
they had been entertained. It was empty of life. 
As they stepped into the corridor, intending to 
leave the house and explore the yards, the lean 
figure of Jose stalked in at the moonlit doorway. 
Behind him came Pachac, and after them more 
of the brainless crew swung into sight. 

“Ha, amigos! At last Jose is himself again— 
without a shirt or a knife, it is true, but clean 
white from hair to heel. Por Dios, what a dif¬ 
ference water makes in a man! And all this 
crowd behind have become men instead of pigs, 
though it took much scrubbing. Now the women 
have been set free and take their turn at the bath. 
What have you found here ? You have searched, 
yes?” 


290 


TIGER RIVER 


“Nothing but rust and spider webs—and bot¬ 
tles of brain killer,” Knowlton told him. 

“That devil-broth—it shall be thrown over the 
walls! But come, let us sit—and, por amor de 
Dios, give me a cigarette! I have had no smoke 
for years.” 

They entered the big room, where, even as he 
snatched the proffered tobacco and papers, he 
glanced about in search for Flora Almagro. 
Rand pointed a thumb backward across the hall. 
Jose nodded. 

“Years?” echoed McKay. 

“Years, capitan. Time is measured by life, 
not by suns. A man may live years in a week, 
or only a week in years. Is it not true? And I 
have been in this place for years, though it is 
hardly two weeks since I came. Ah-h-h!” 

He gulped smoke into his lungs and exhaled 
rapturously. 

Behind him the brown and the white men who 
had been slaves came sifting into the room. As 
their leader said, they once more were men, clean 
from scalp to sole, their skins glowing from the 
strenuous ablutions they had given themselves; 
and somehow they seemed to stand the straighter 
now, to look a little more alive, as if that bathing 
had refreshed brain as well as body. Yet, though 
they no longer were driven beasts, one glance 
at them showed that their minds still were fet¬ 
tered in a black bondage. 

As they pressed in and spread out like an aim- 


THE DEVIL’S BREW 


291 


lessly flowing stream, the five reunited partners 
watched them soberly. Jose sadly shook his 
head. 

“My people,” he said. “The people who fol¬ 
lowed me into this, as well as those who came 
before me. And you too, senores, would have 
been spared much if you had never joined Jose 
Martinez at the mouth of the Tigre Yacu. I 
have a heavy task v before me, friends—to clean 
the minds of these men as I have cleaned their 
bodies. I hope it can be done, but only my wife 
Huarma can do it.” 

“How?” puzzled Knowlton. 

“She is wise in the ways of herbs and drugs. 
Though very young, she is the medicine woman 
of her people. And what one evil leaf has done, 
another good leaf may undo. We shall see.” 

“You mean to say that all these men were 
robbed of their brains by a jungle herb?” de¬ 
manded Rand. 

“1 do, Sehor Dave. You have heard of the 
floripondio?” 

Blank faces answered him. 

“You have not. Be thankful that you have 
none of it within you now. If you had, you soon 
would know more of it than words can tell. 

“I am not a medico or a droguero—one skilled 
in drugs—but I know of that devil-weed, for I 
have heard of it from men of the Napo country. 
Up that Rio Napo—and in other places, too, no 
doubt—it is sometimes given a man by his woman 


292 


TIGER RIVER 


when she tires of him and wants another; and 
he becomes an imbecile who will be the slave of 
that woman and of her new love, not knowing 
what he does. 

“It is steeped like a tea, that is all; made like 
the guayusa. But where the guayusa drives 
weariness from the most tired man and makes 
him keen, the floripondio deadens the brain of 
the strongest. Put into food or drink, it soon 
does its deadly work without the man knowing 
what is paralyzing his mind. Then he is lost. 

“So, friends, that is the reason why the miss¬ 
ing men of the Tigre have not come back. That 
is the reason why you now see those who are 
before you turned to animals. Only a little leaf 
of the jungle, plucked and put into water— 
cooked by the same fire that warms innocent food 
—and then used by human fiends to wreck the 
reason of men!” 


CHAPTER XXVI 

PHANTOM TREASURE 

T HE missing men of the Tigre and their 
new comrades in misfortune, the men of 
Pachac, stood for a time looking dully 
about them. Then, as if by simultaneous tacit 
consent, they lay down on the floor and disposed 
themselves for rest. Uncovered, unbedded, they 
relaxed and closed their eyes like men long inured 
to nothing better. Only Pachac himself still 
stood, pathetically dependent on the brain of his 
new son. 

“Tired, yes,” nodded Jose. “They have 
worked under the lash since sunrise, they have 
fought hard to-night. So have I. But my mind 
is not burdened like theirs, and it will not yet 
allow me to rest. Let us sit, comrades, 
and-” 

A fresh padding of feet in the corridor inter¬ 
rupted him. In at the door flocked women and 
children, led by the daughters of the chief; the 
weaker portion of the white Indian tribe. Scan¬ 
ning them, the five partners saw at once that the 
curse of the floripondio had not been put on their 
minds. Their eyes darted eagerly about in search 
for husbands, brothers, fathers. Having found 
their men, they ran to them; then sank silently 
293 



294 TIGER RIVER 

down at their sides without disturbing their 
rest. 

The outlaw’s sober face lightened. 

“That will help much,” he declared. “With 
the women to follow the orders of Huarma and 
care for their men, much may be done. 1 have 
not seen them since the accursed drug was put 
on us, and I feared that they, too, were darkened 
in mind.” 

He spoke to the tallest of his brides—the one 
who, he had said, was Huarma the medicine 
woman. With dignity worthy of her father, yet 
with due deference to her hawk-faced lord, she 
responded. He nodded again. 

“The women and children,” he explained, 
“have been used as slaves on the plantation, 
which lies back among the trees to the west. The 
woman Almagro thought it not worth her trouble 
to drug them—she knew they dared not try to 
escape without their men. Is it not true, 
senores, that human fiends always are tripped 
at last by something they have left undone? 
If that woman had not held in contempt the 
women of Pachac, and in particular the daugh¬ 
ters of Pachac, we should not now be here, 
nor would she be lying dead across the cor¬ 
ridor. But now that we all are together once 
more, let us speak of what has been and what 
may be.” 

He dropped his cigarette stub, eyed the table, 
and, with a grin, strode to it. Shoving the big 


PHANTOM TREASURE 


295 


upturned bowl to the middle of the board, he 
swung himself up and squatted on its broad yel¬ 
low base. Then he beckoned with both hands 
to his wives and their sisters and father. Laugh¬ 
ingly they approached and ranged themselves 
along the table edge, placing their parent in the 
middle. The Americans smiled as they con¬ 
templated the scene. 

“Begorry, Hozy, ol’-timer,” grinned Tim, “ye 
look like a baboon king—naw, that ain’t the 
word-” 

“Barbarian,” chuckled Rand. 

“Yeah. Jest what a barbarian king is I dunno, 
but Hozy’s one.” 

The metaphor was not bad. Seated on a 
golden throne, with his foster father at his feet 
staring owlishly outward; with his comely women 
lined at his sides and his people prostrate before 
him; with the royal purple lining the walls of 
the spacious hall, the bare-flamed gold lamps 
glowing, and the jungle moon slanting its white 
beams in at the narrow openings behind—Jose 
Martinez, man without a country, naked and 
fiercely bearded, looked to be the truculent ruler 
of some forgotten kingdom resurrected from pre¬ 
historic time. And here in this untamed land, 
where the rise and fall of nations and the passage 
of centuries meant nothing at all, he truly was 
a king; for in his sinewy hand rested whatever 
power existed. 

Now his gaunt face cracked wide, and he 



TIGER RIVER 


296 

seized an empty gold cup and held it aloft in a 
grotesquely dramatic gesture. 

“Dios guarde al rey!” he cackled. “God save 
the king! But of what good is it to be king when 
one cannot drink his own health? To-morrow, 
my ambassadors from North America, we must 
search our royal cellar for wine not doctored. 
Then our treasure shall be doubled, for if we 
drink enough we can see two bars of gold where 
only one was. Hah!” 

“What’s that? Bars of gold? Where?” de¬ 
manded McKay. 

“Where? Where but here, capitan? Why 
do you think all these men have been held slaves, 
robbed of brains, driven with whips? For what, 
but to work in the mine?” 

“Great guns! You mean that? What mine?” 

“The mine of gold in the mountain to the rear. 
Si! Gold! The gold of mad Rafael Pardo! 
Hah! You are astonished, yes? You believed, 
as I did, the wail of the woman that the mine was 
destroyed? She sang you that same song, and 
you have not had time to think why these men 


He stopped short and sprang up, suddenly 
pale. The others, too, except the sleeping men, 
lott color and staggered. The solid floor had 
quivered under them. 

From the cordon of mountains outside sounded 
a low rumbling growl. Again the floor shud¬ 
dered slightly. Then all was still. 



PHANTOM TREASURE 


297 


“Once more the temblor!” breathed Jose, his 
eyes darting about the walls. “Once more the 
ground shivers. But it is past—until it comes 
again. And these solid old walls have stood 
worse shocks, no doubt. Let us forget it.” 

Yet the gleam was gone from his eyes and 
the ring from his voice as he went on, and 
the sudden fire that had swept the veins of 
the Americans at the magic words “gold 
mine” had as swiftly cooled. Each felt the 
hand of an awful power hovering over the 
house, able, at its brute whim, to crush it and 
its occupants into jumbled stones and mangled 
corpses. 

“Gold is here, amigos,” said Jose. “And it Is 
ours. But let us start at the beginning. First 
tell me how you came here, and what happened 
before and after.” 

He sat again on his yellow throne, and the 
four disposed themselves as comfortably as 
might be on the long couch. To stand would not 
help them if another quake came. 

Briefly Knowlton detailed the happenings since 
Jose had turned his back on them at the lake of 
the burning sands. As the minutes passed and 
no further sound come from the mountains, all 
forgot the recent ground tremble. And when 
the tale was done the Peruvian’s face again was 
alight with interest. 

“So that was the heavy blow we earth rats 
felt this afternoon—the falling of the trail along 


TIGER RIVER 


298 

the cliff. We felt the temblor, too, down there 
in our hole—si, it sickened us!—but what the 
blow meant we did not know. Nor did I know, 
until this moment, of that shelf along the rock. 
We came in by another way.” 

“Then there’s a way out?” 

“There is one—there may be others. We 
shall see. But when the rains fall hard, as they 
soon will, that way will be closed by water. We 
came in here, sehores, through the ground! 

“Si, es verdad; it is true. My father Pachac 
knew that way, and told me of no other. We 
came as he directed. We left the path at a 
watery ravine, going up in the water and killing 
our trail. And after wading far we followed 
Pachac, who went over the hills to more water, 
and so here. 

“If you looked about you to-day, you must 
have seen that this place is a gulf among moun¬ 
tains. And if it had no outlet, when the rains 
came they would fill it up, and it would be a lake. 
Yet it is dry and firm—why? Because at one 
place near its middle there is a hole, and that 
hole runs away under the earth to the other side 
of a mountain to the south, and through it all 
the rain streams run out. It has not much water 
now, and we came in along its bed without much 
trouble—though it was a long, black journey, 
and I had to club snakes to death as I 
advanced.” 

Thus the mystery of the vanishing trail of 


PHANTOM TREASURE 


299 


Pachac and his people was explained. The 
Americans made no comment. Jose went on. 

“Now this is the tale of this place, and of the 
family of Almagro, as my Padre Pachac knows 
it: 

“Long ago, before Pachac was born, and 
while his father’s father was a very young war¬ 
rior, there came from somewhere to the north 
a band of hard-fighting men who seemed all of 
the same family. They came as if seeking a place 
where they would not be found by some one or 
something they had left behind them—not flee¬ 
ing, but always watching toward the rear. And 
they brought, besides themselves, their women 
and slaves: white women and Indian workers; 
the women dressed and armed like men, and the 
Indians carrying burdens. 

“They found this gulf among the mountains, 
which then was much easier to enter than now, 
for into it led a narrow twisting canon. And 
they had no more than come into it when they 
spied gold—a yellow splash of it on bare rock, 
plain to any eye. So here they stayed. 

“Not long after they came, another band, 
much bigger, without women, also came from the 
north as if hunting them. But the heavy rains 
were now beginning, and the waters rushing from 
every side not only swept away all trace of the 
Almagro trail but discouraged and drove away 
the pursuers. They never returned. 

“The Almagro family made their Indians 


300 


TIGER RIVER 


work on the walls and on the gold. They were 
hard masters, and the Indians died out. Then 
the white men went out into the jungle round 
about, and with their guns they killed chiefs and 
made slaves of their people. These, too, they 
worked to death in their mine—men and women 
and children, all were driven like cattle until they 
died. 

“This went on for years, and much gold was 
taken out, but the family stayed on. The older 
Almagros died, and the younger ones also grew 
old and died; but the gold still was there. Earth¬ 
quakes came and closed up the entrance canon 
and wrecked the mine; but they opened up their 
gold hole again and kept burrowing. Yet, the 
more gold they got, the slower the work went 
and the weaker they grew. 

“Two things made this so: they could not get 
enough Indians now, because the Indians either 
moved too far away or were too strong for them; 
and they would not mate with Indians and keep 
their family big. They mated among them¬ 
selves, brother with sister, and most of the chil¬ 
dren died young or were dull of brain. Some 
were killed by Indians, some by earthquakes, 
some by snakes or other jungle things. The 
family grew very small: too small to be able to 
leave the place. They knew the Jiveros would 
get them. 

“Then, from trying to enslave Indians by 
force, they began buying prisoners from those 


PHANTOM TREASURE 


301 


Indians. With the Jiveros they could do noth¬ 
ing, but with other Indians they arranged trades. 
Whatever prisoners they could buy they took, 
paying with gold, which the Indians could trade 
out by crossing to the Curaray and then journey¬ 
ing down to the Napo. 

“Pachac, and his father before him, knew of 
this trade in prisoners, but had nothing to do 
with it. They were wanderers, lived too far 
down the Tigre to make the trade profitable, did 
not want white men’s goods, and would rather 
kill their enemies than sell them. But when 
Pachac’s half-Spanish son grew up he had dif¬ 
ferent ideas. He wanted white men’s guns and 
cartridges, and Pachac let him keep prisoners and 
send them here. So that, amigos, was what was 
meant when we were told we should go to the 
wheel.” 

“What is the wheel?” queried Rand. 

“It is a thing made to crush ore, and a man 
killer. In some ways it is like the trapiche sugar 
mill used in the Andes, which is worked by cattle 
going around and around. Here, men are the 
cattle. Many a poor slave must have worn out 
his life on the infernal thing.” 

“What’s that big bell outside for?” Knowlton 
asked. 

“What it was used for at first, or where it 
came from, I cannot tell you. I know only the 
tale as it is told me by Pachac. But now it has 
been used to call in the men from the mine. I 


302 


TIGER RIVER 


suppose that if an Indian attack should come it 
would be rung at any time, but since I have been 
here it has rung only at night, after a day with¬ 
out end—a day of horrible toil. 

“We were herded in a foul pen behind here, 
with stout gates which no man could pass. The 
pen opens into a walled passage leading into the 
mine. A rotten breakfast at daybreak—a day 
of torture under the whips of those unfeeling 
Zaparo brutes we killed to-night—another rot¬ 
ten meal after dark—>a night sleeping on the 
filthy stones of our pen—then back to more 
labor. That is the life here. 

“Men who have tried to escape were maimed 
so that they were not likely to travel far again— 
their toes cut off. Some of them now lie here 
in this room. One—Rafael Pardo—reached 
Iquitos, as you know. And you say another was 
killed by green men above? So some did try 
again—perhaps the floripondio was weak at 
times and men grew cunning and desperate for 
a while. 

“But I think that accursed drug was put into 
the food at certain times to keep the men always 
dull of brain. I think, too, that the use of it 
was an idea of the woman Flora and not of her 
fathers—though I do not know that to be so. 
But Huarma, my wife, saw that woman of evil 
putting it into food after we men had been sent 
to the pen, so I know it was given us at times. 1 ’ 

“How come ye to dodge it?” Tim wondered. 


PHANTOM TREASURE 


303 


“I did not dodge it, Senor Tim. The woman 
betrayed us all. We knew nothing of her devil 
brew, and when she received us in friendly man¬ 
ner and gave us food and drink we took it gladly 
—and awoke in the morning unable to think and 
covered by the guns of those slave drivers—guns 
taken from men who had won through to this 
place before us and then had been made idiots. 

“But Huarma, chosen as one of the house 
slaves, spied and learned what the thing was 
that had made us beasts. Then she told women 
sent to the plantation to find fos her a certain 
herb—I do not know what—it is one of the medi¬ 
cine secrets o'f her people. This she brought to 
me at night, with clean food and drink, though 
she would have died if the guards had caught 
her. Night after night she came, and my mind 
grew keen, and our father’s dullness, too, was 
partly cleared away—she had not enough medi¬ 
cine for us both, and she gave me the best of it. 
But she warned me to keep playing fool until 
her chance should come to open our gate and let 
me lead an attack. To-night that chance came.” 

“A reg’lar he-woman, I’ll tell the world!” ad¬ 
mired Tim. “But where’s all this gold ye brag 
about?” 

Jose arose, stretching his long arms wide, a 
triumphant grin lighting his face. 

“Come and see, comrades—partners! It is 
put every noon into a vault—the pure gold which 
has been melted into bars. The guards alone 


TIGER RIVER 


304 

handle it, but I know where it goes: in at a door 
in the wall near the mine entrance. There must 
be a huge room there in the side of the mountain, 
piled with the gold of four lifetimes. Come!” 

They came. Out into the moonlight, down a 
yard where the stones still glistened redly and 
bodies lay piled beside* the wall, they followed 
him. On into a patio where shone a deep pool 
of water—evidently the bathing place of the 
Almagros—and through a ruined gate like that 
of a prison yard; across a walled space whose 
fetid odor told that it was the slave pen, they 
strode. There, after hauling open another solid 
gate, they entered a long runway terminating in 
a black tunnel. At the tunnel mouth their guide 
paused. 

At his right showed a stout door, set in the 
wall and heavily barred. 

“Hah!” he exulted. “Here lies the treasure 
of the Almagros! After all their crime and 
cruelty it goes to a slave, and to his comrades 
who to-morrow might also have been slaves. If 
you would use your gold, you Almagros, reach 
out now from the fires where you roast, and 
snatch it to buy a drop of water from your mas¬ 
ter, the devil! We come to take it from you. 
Ho, ho, ho!” 

He tugged at a bar, which slid with an ease 
telling of constant use. Eager hands forced the 
other bars away. The door swung open. 

Holding aloft the lamps they had brought, 


PHANTOM TREASURE 


305 


the four stepped in and stared about. For a 
moment they stood speechless. 

“Cristo!” Jose spat then. “What demon’s 
work is this?” 

They saw a stone-walled, stone-roofed, stone- 
floored cell not more than twenty feet square. 
They saw nothing else. 

The vault was empty. 


CHAPTER XXVII 


THE HEAD-HUNTERS 

D AYS passed. 

Days of work, they were; days of striv¬ 
ing to restore the drug-deadened minds 
of the former slaves to their one-time vigor; 
days of search for the vanished treasure of the 
Almagros, of exploration and critical examina¬ 
tion of the mine. And each was followed by an 
evening of discouraged discussion. 

Far more success was achieved with minds 
than with mines. Under the skillful treatment 
of Huarma the men of Pachac steadily shed the 
incubus of brain blight, awaking each morning 
with clearer eyes and quicker wits. Pachac him¬ 
self, whose curative treatment at the hands of 
his daughter had begun while he still was a fel¬ 
low-slave of Jose, now was wholly himself again, 
though gloomy in spirit because he had lost his 
most cherished possession—the gruesome girdle 
woven from the hair of his slain enemies. At 
some time during his term of bondage it had 
been cut off him by a brutal guard who found 
that it served as a protection against whip blows, 
and now it could not be found despite the most 
persistent search. 

But the survivors of the Tigre’s missing men, 

306 


THE HEAD-HUNTERS 


307 

who had been here long before the coming of 
Jose and his tribe, showed little response to the 
ministrations of the youthful medicine woman. 
Their brains had been permeated for months, or 
years, by the terrible floripondio; and it was use¬ 
less to expect a speedy revival of their mental 
faculties. True, they seemed a trifle less brutish, 
and in time they might regain full control of 
themselves. But for the present they gave little 
indication that they would ever again be the men 
they had been. In view of the fact that most, if 
not all, of the white men among them had been 
dangerous criminals before ever they came up 
the Tigre Yacu, perhaps it was as well for the 
others that their power to plan and execute vio¬ 
lence now was more or less atrophied. 

They were kept at work, those witless crea¬ 
tures, both for their own good and for the 
benefit of the community; but not at their former 
tasks in the mine. First they and the reviving 
warriors of Pachac were divided into squads 
which dug graves on the hillsides beyond the 
walls; and there Flora Almagro and the men of 
both sides who had fallen on that red night of 
revolt were buried deep. Then they were turned 
to cleaning up the house and its yard, making 
the mouldy old rooms again habitable and the 
former slave pen fit to traverse. After that the 
Pachac men were set by their chief at making 
new weapons, while the others were drawn off 
to work with the women on the plantation—light 


3 o8 Tiger river 

labor which gave them the fresh air and clean 
sunlight of which they had been so long robbed 
in the gloomy mine holes. 

For the present, the mine was deserted by all 
except the restless five adventurers, who, after a 
thorough inspection, also left it and returned to 
their first search—for the Almagro wealth. 
Their examination showed that the mine was 
practically worked out. Some gold yet remained, 
but what was in sight made the inspectors shake 
their heads; and the place was so honeycombed 
with shafts and tunnels as to show that the moun¬ 
tain not only was virtually looted of its treasure 
but absolutely unsafe to work in. An unusually 
sharp earth shock would probably cause it to 
crumple on itself, crushing the mine into nothing. 
And, in the past few days, several more slight 
quakes already had occurred. 

Yet the pinching vein of yellow in the mine was 
all the gold they found. Hunt high, hunt low, 
not one bar out of the tons which must have come 
from it could be discovered 

They ransacked house, yards, and even the 
mine itself for some trace. They pounded walls 
and floors, listening for hollow sounds. They 
swam about in the bathing pool, hunting under 
water. In only one place did they find sign that 
gold had ever lain. That was on the stone floor 
of the vault where, Jose swore, he had seen bars 
taken in at noon. 

That floor bore out his assertion. Between 


THE HEAD-HUNTERS 309 

its stones were many grains of the metal, evi¬ 
dently chipped from the bars by rough edges and 
corners of the rock. But where it had gone, and 
how, no man could tell, though all sorts of wild 
guesses were made. 

“By cripes, them dead ones done jest what ye 
dared ’em to, Hozy,” Tim said sourly one day. 
“They hopped up often their gridirons and 
yanked the whole layout down to their winter 
quarters. Mebbe it’s melted by now and they’re 
swimmin’ in it.” 

Jose grinned, but with little enjoyment. 

“I wish we had saved one of those slave 
drivers as a prisoner that night,” he regretted. 
“He could be made to tell things, perhaps. But 
then there was neither time nor reason to think 
of anything but killing. And now—dead men 
tell no tales.” 

They were standing at the tunnel mouth as 
they talked, the hot afternoon sun glaring down 
on one side, the dark empty mine yawning at 
them on the other. Along the walled passage 
leading from mine to pen no other figure moved. 
Somewhere up in the yards Pachac and his men 
were lazily working away at the manufacture of 
their new weapons. Out on the plantation, well 
away from the walls, the women and their male 
assistants were toiling as they pleased. Within 
the house the chief’s daughters were busy at 
various occupations. For several days even the 
distant menace of the Jivero signal drums had 


3 io 


TIGER RIVER 


been stilled. All was peace. Yet, from force 
of habit, each of the partners was carrying his 
gun. 

“Well,” said Knowlton, as they turned toward 
the house, “it doesn’t get us anything to keep 
coming back and mooning around this vault like 
a bunch of kids who have lost their baseball. The 
stuff’s gone somewhere, and we’ve looked every¬ 
where. The only thing left is to take this whole 
place apart stone by stone, and that would use 
up a few years of time. Guess we’d do better 
to scout around these hills arid locate a new 
mine.” 

“The pot of gold was at the end of the rain¬ 
bow, but somebody’s moved the pot,” nodded 
Rand. “Or maybe the rainbow’s moved. Either 
way, it’s up to us to move also, unless something 
develops soon.” 

He glanced around at the mountain tops loom¬ 
ing beyond the wall. Jose followed his look. 

“I doubt, Serior Dave, if you will find gold 
anywhere else in this valley,” he said. “Re¬ 
member, the Almagros were here many years. 
If more gold were here they would have smelled 
it out long ago.” 

“Sure. But there’s a whole cordillera along 
here for us to browse in. Say, do you keep feel¬ 
ing as if these mountains were watching you— 
hostile—ready to jump on your back?” 

“Always,” the outlaw admitted. “Perhaps 
those Almagros felt it, too, and built these walls 


THE HEAD-HUNTERS 


3 ii 

more to make them feel safe than to shut out 
the savages.” 

“Made ’em thick enough, anyways,” said Tim. 
“Ye could run a tunnel right through ’em from 
end to end, and nobody’d know ’twas there.” 

McKay stopped short. His eyes ranged along 
one of the walls—the one in which the door of 
that empty vault was set. 

“By George!” he exclaimed. “Tim, I’ll bet 
you’ve hit it. Secret passage in the wall from 
that vault to—some place under ground, maybe. 
We’ll rip a hole in this wall and find out. What 
say, Jose?” 

“PorDios! Capitan, it may be —— But no. 
We have tested the stones in that vault and found 
no entrance. Of what use would be a tunnel 
ending in a solid wall?” 

“True. But there’s something, somewhere, 
that we haven’t found. I want a breach made in 
this wall, just to-” 

“Hark!” Rand cut In. 

Across the gulf, thin and high, echoed a 
scream. 

It was the cry of a fear-stricken woman. It 
came from the direction of the plantation. It 
swelled from one isolated note of fright to the 
voices of other women breaking out in mortal 
terror. 

“Demonio!” Jose cried sharply. “The women 
of Pachac do not scream unless the devil himself 
is after them!” 




312 


TIGER RIVER 


He darted away toward the yards. The 
others dashed after him. 

As they ran, they heard the outcries coming 
nearer. Then the screams died down, the women 
needing all their breath for running. But from 
the yards where Pachac and his men lounged now 
rose a new uproar—a harsh outbreak of surprise 
and rage. Then, high over all, sounded another 
appalling note from the plantation. 

It was the awful death yell of a man. 

Through the old slave pen, through the patio 
with its quiet pool, and into the long yard beside 
the house ran Jose and his comrades. That yard 
now was empty; for Pachac and his warriors had 
plunged through the big open gateway, and their 
yells of wrathful defiance roared outside the 
walls. Jose tore on around the corner to join 
them, his swarthy face contracted into a fighting 
mask. But the Americans, with McKay in the 
lead, lunged straight at the wall. 

There rose a crude ladder, lashed to the rough 
scaffolding which they had noticed on their first 
arrival: one of several short stair flights by which 
defenders could man the walls in haste. Up this 
swarmed the captain and the following three. 
Hardly had McKay jumped into position against 
the upper stones when his rifle began to crack. 
In rapid succession the other guns added their 
v/icked voices in a chorus of death. 

Streaming toward them, close at hand now, 
they saw the panting women, throwing them- 


THE HEAD-HUNTERS 3x3 

selves up the hill toward safety. Close behind, 
their paint-streaked faces grinning in mingled 
ferocity and triumph, bounded warriors of the 
Jiveros. 

The dreaded drums at the west, which a few 
days ago had muttered back and forth, had not 
been merely grumbling among themselves over 
the killing of an ambushed band by the men of 
Pachac back on the Tigre. The ensuing silence 
had not meant peace. Now the vengeful killers 
from the Pastassa were here to gain heads and 
women, and to destroy this stronghold which for 
generations had repulsed their fathers. 

And the big gate was open, nearly all the de¬ 
fenders outside, and their women prizes almost 
within reach of their clutching hands. 

But the hands of those foremost pursuers 
closed, not on the flying hair or bare shoulders 
of their prey, but in death-clawings at the ground. 
From their elevated platform the four gunmen 
stabbed flame and death downward. From the 
gate the roar of Jose’s repeater broke out. From 
the disordered ranks of the men of Pachac a 
ragged flight of arrows whirred. 

The sudden storm of lead and of five-foot 
shafts struck the nearest Jiveros to earth. War¬ 
riors collapsed, pitched headlong, kicked, rolled, 
were still. Others, disconcerted by the abrupt 
belch of death from walls which a moment ago 
had been empty, slowed to fit arrows to their 
bows. But behind them a thick stream of other 


314 


TIGER RIVER 


savages came pouring across the bowl and up 
the slope. The rush was checked for only an 
instant. 

“Holy Saint Pat!” gasped Tim between shots. 
“There’s a reg’lar army o’ the hellions!” 

The women reached the gate and reeled 
within, eyes glazed with terror and lungs gasping 
for breath. The Americans clattered their 
breech bolts without raising fresh cartridges. 
Their magazines were shot out—and the extra 
ammunition was inside the house. 

“Jose!” roared McKay. “Inside, quick! 
Inside!” 

Another defiant blast from the outlaw’s gun 
drowned the command. An ululation of rage 
from the men of Pachac followed. Outnum¬ 
bered though they were, they were seeing red 
and thirsting to close with their hereditary foes. 

“God!” gritted McKay. “It’ll be a massacre! 
Hold ’em, men! Hold ’em with your side-arms!” 

He dropped his rifle, leaped down into the 
yard, sprinted for the gate. The three remain¬ 
ing on the wall unholstered their forty-fives and 
again opened on the enemy. The ripping roar 
of the big pistols, the impact of the heavy bullets 
among them, again slowed the Jiveros in the van, 
but did not stop them—except those hit, who 
were stopped forever. The others, though they 
flinched and batted their eyes at each recurrent 
crash, loosed a retaliating storm of arrows. And 
they came on. 


THE HEAD-HUNTERS 3I5 

The deadly shafts splintered against the walls, 
hurtled overhead, hissed between the pistol 
fighters. Too, they plunged into the unbulwarked 
white Indians. Several of Pachac’s men 
dropped, writhing. 

Out on their rear now raced McKay with 
pistol drawn. In three bounds he was beside 
Jose and Pachac. His gun and his voice broke 
out together—the weapon hurling lead at the 
oncoming savages, the commands striking Jose 
like blows. 

“Inside!” Bang! “Jump-” Bang! 

“-you-” Bang! “-damned idiot!” 

Bang-bang! “No brains!” Bang-bang! “In¬ 
side, fool!” 

Jose jumped. For once he had forgotten that, 
as fight commander of this gang, he must govern 
them—he had reverted to the lone fierce jungle 
rover fighting against odds, thinking only of kill¬ 
ing as long as he could. McKay’s voice brought 
him to his senses. He lunged at his men, cursing, 
shoving, hitting, propelling them in through the 
wall. 

The Indians themselves were sobered a little 
by the fall of their kinsmen under the Jivero 
arrows. Under the crackling orders of Jose and 
the weight of his fist and foot they gave way, 
turned, and sprang for cover. But they took all 
their dead with them, and their wounded, too, 
though the stricken men still living would not live 
long with the poison of those arrows in their 





TIGER RIVER 


316 

veins. No Jivero should take a head from them 
until the whole tribe of Pachac was down. 

Last of all, McKay and Jose backed in, dodg¬ 
ing javelins thrown by Jiveros leaping toward 
them. As the massive gate was heaved shut the 
firing ended. The pistols of the three above 
were empty. 

An instant later the Jiveros struck the gate and 

the walls, 


CHAPTER XXVIII 

THE MOUNTAINS SPEAK 

I ATER on, the survivors of this battle were 
j to learn that only a wandering woman, 
seeking herbs in the forest beyond the 
plantation, had prevented a complete surprise of 
the Almagro fortress and a wholesale massacre 
of its men. 

She had spied the first of the Jiveros slipping 
along through the jungle, creeping toward the 
house. Screaming, she had fled with the speed 
of mortal fear, first to the plantation and then 
toward the protecting walls, her sisters dashing 
after her. Thanks to their frenzied swiftness 
and the devastating gunfire, they all reached 
cover. 

But the dull-brained men working with them 
on the plantation died. Whether they failed to 
grasp their peril and stood blankly gaping until 
the Jiveros were upon them, whether a sudden 
flare of manhood prompted them to leap at the 
savages and attempt to protect the retreat of the 
women, will never be known. But none of them 
lived to move far from the spot where he was 
standing when the alarm broke out. 

Now Knowlton and Rand and Tim, standing 
a few seconds longer at the wall after emptying 
317 


TIGER RIVER 


3i8 

their pistols, glanced around at a horde of rush¬ 
ing savages grimacing at them in fury, howling 
a jungle hymn of hate, brandishing aloft the 
ghastly trophies chopped from those missing men 
of the Tigre who would never go out again. The 
sight of those severed heads and of the vindictive 
triumph in the faces of the wild men exhibiting 
them both sickened and infuriated the whites. 
They threw their pistols into aim once more, then 
remembered their uselessness. 

“Got to git more shells!” rasped Tim. “And 
then, ye bloody butchers—then!” 

He stooped and seized McKay’s abandoned 
rifle preparatory to sliding down the ladder. As 
he did so an arrow impaled his hat and knocked 
it into the yard, the shaft hurtling on and slither¬ 
ing up and over the house roof. Others whizzed 
around Rand and Knowlton, who ducked and 
dropped to the yard below. A gloating yell 
swelled from outside, the bowmen believing the 
quick disappearance due to hits. 

The three sprinted for the door, Tim passing 
McKay’s gun to him on the run as they plunged 
inside. The captain clutched it automatically, 
his whole mind busy with the urgent problem of 
bringing order out of chaos, whipping the dis¬ 
ordered rabble into an efficient fighting force. 
And a problem it was; for these men, little less 
wild than the ravening Jiveros outside, knew only 
one style of fighting—the slipping, dodging com¬ 
bat of the thick bush, the jungle animal method 


THE MOUNTAINS SPEAK 319 

of grappling with a foe and dispatching him— 
and now that they found themselves cooped 
within white men’s walls they hardly knew how 
to make use of themselves. 

Those few who had been trained in rifle work 
by the dead Spanish-Indian son of Pachac were 
useless now as gunmen, for, though the guns of 
the conquered slave drivers were at hand, there 
were hardly any cartridges of that caliber— 
Jose himself had only a handful left for his own 
rifle. The others, though equipped with their 
new arrows and spears and clubs, had no poison 
with which to smear the points of the missiles 
and no chance to use the bludgeons. All were 
in a fever to meet their foes instanter, but none 
acted in cohesion with the rest. 

Some shot arrows or hurled spears upward at 
random, hoping to hit enemies outside by pure 
luck. Others scrambled to the fighting runway 
overhead, stood still while they loosed at the 
Jiveros, and were swept down to death by coun¬ 
terflights of venomed shafts. A few even sought 
to reopen the big gate and jump out with spear 
or club. The whole yard was a furore of 
blundering action. 

Jose himself, though struggling furiously to 
get his men in hand, hardly knew what he wanted 
to do with them. He, too, was a jungle fighter, 
not a soldier. And McKay, who saw that these 
raging warriors would never consent to herd 
themselves inside the house and do their battling 


320 


TIGER RIVER 


through narrow slits, could not impress on their 
hot minds the only other expedient—to carry on 
a running skirmish along the walls. Nor could 
he get Jose, assailing his own men with fist and 
foot and lurid language, to listen to his roaring 
counsel. And Pachac, his teeth gritting in im¬ 
potent craving to bludgeon some Jivero with a 
huge club gripped in his knotty fists, was neither 
able nor willing to understand the white man. 

The reappearance of his own comrades, their 
pockets and shirt fronts crammed with the re¬ 
serve ammunition, was a godsend to the captain. 
Mechanically accepting a hatful of mingled rifle 
and pistol cartridges shoved at him by Knowlton, 
he yelled: 

“Up on the walls! Merry, left wall—Dave 
right—Tim front I Shoot, duck, run, shoot I 
Up and at ’em!” 

The three jumped for their respective walls. 
But each halted and threw up his reloaded rifle. 
Atop the stonework, hands and heads were ap¬ 
pearing—heads of warriors who had scaled up 
on the shoulders of others and now were heaving 
themselves inward like old-time pirates clamber¬ 
ing over the bulwarks of a fighting prize. 

For a few seconds the yard roared with the 
rattle of gunfire. The heads flopped backward 
and were gone. The Americans reloaded and 
again ran for their stations. 

By the time they had scaled the ladders more 
heads were rising across the stones. Each 


THE MOUNTAINS SPEAK 321 

swiftly shot his own sector clear, then ducked to 
evade a hail of missiles hurled by Jiveros farther 
out. They crawled a yard or two, then popped 
up and slammed a few bullets into the enemy be¬ 
fore sinking and moving on a little farther. 

The renewed rip of the guns and the up-and- 
down-and-over tactics of the gunmen had drawn 
the eyes of every white Indian. Now, with their 
example plain before all, McKay hammered 
home his plan of battle. 

“Jose!” he bellowed, his voice booming 
through the ferine chorus from outside. “Divide 
forces! Man the walls! Make your men keep 
moving! Like that!” 

His rifle swept around, indicating the dodging 
three who were shooting down the enemy while 
keeping themselves protected. 

“Keep them moving!” he repeated. “Or 
they’ll be killed like those!” And he pointed to 
the corpses of Indians who had stood still long 
enough to become targets. 

This time Jose listened, saw, understood. At 
once he began driving the idea into the head of 
Pachac. That veteran, after viewing again the 
way the three riflemen were working, put the 
plan into effect at once. 

The warriors, whom neither Jose nor McKay 
had been able to handle, caught the idea quickly 
when their chief howled it at them, and sprang 
with alacrity to the sides pointed out. This mov¬ 
ing, sliding method of warfare was not, after all, 


322 


TIGER RIVER 


much different from bush fighting, except that it 
was carried on along a narrow wall path, above 
ground and behind a stone barrier. From every 
angle it was the best mode of defense under the 
conditions: it not only gave the men on the wall 
the maximum protection coupled with ability to 
see their enemies and shoot straight, but it kept 
them ranging all along instead of holding only 
small sections. True, their bows were clumsy 
weapons to handle in such narrow quarters, and 
the rear of the place was virtually unprotected, 
due to lack of men. But such strength as the 
defenders had was now put where it could be 
used with most deadly effect. 

Scrambling along the runway, rising to heave 
spears and dart arrows out and down, dropping 
and moving on, civilized and savage allies car¬ 
ried on their jack-in-the-box warfare. Few heads 
now rose on the other side, for most of the Ji- 
veros had drawn back to get a straighter aim 
at their quarry; and those who did attempt scal¬ 
ing were quickly shot down by the ready guns. 
Some of the assailants took cover around the big 
butts of near-by trees, but the main body scorned 
defense, moving about in the open and snapping 
spear or arrow at the appearing and disappearing 
heads within the walls. And into their mass 
poured a galling fire which carpeted the hillside 
with dead. 

Yet McKay, though he now had marshaled his 
forces into the only feasible formation, felt in 


THE MOUNTAINS SPEAK 


323 


his bones that this was a losing fight. Rapidly 
he ran along all three walls, ascending ladders, 
glancing about, crashing a bullet or two into 
savages, then descending and dashing to another 
section; and he saw that, as Tim had said, there 
was a “reg’lar army o’ the hellions,” far out¬ 
numbering his own weirdly assorted garrison in 
both men and missiles. 

It could not be long before the cartridges 
and arrows and javelins of his men would run 
out. Then only five machetes, a few empty rifles, 
and a meager supply of clubs would remain 
with which to assail the savages who would 
come crawling over the walls on all sides. To 
fight hand-to-hand in the yard against an over¬ 
powering force meant inevitable death. To 
withdraw into the house meant slower death; 
for the vengeful Jiveros, if unable eventually to 
batter a way in, would camp outside and 
besiege them until starvation claimed all im¬ 
mured within. 

Jose, too, saw this. He, like McKay, was run¬ 
ning from place to place, keeping his men moving 
up and down, preventing a bunching of forces at 
any one spot, scaling the ladders now and then 
to look out and spit bullets and curses at the 
beleaguering head-hunters. The two met before 
the big house door, in which the women and 
children were packed, watching. 

“Por Dios, capitan!” grinned the outlaw. 
“For once I think Jose is caught in a trap which 


TIGER RIVER 


324 

he cannot break free from! But the Jivero who 
cuts my throat shall cross a heap of his com¬ 
rades to get me I” 

“Looks bad,” admitted McKay, mopping his 
dripping face. As he spoke, two of the white 
Indians toppled from the runway, quivered on 
the stones, and lay still. “Too many for us. 
We’ll have to get inside before long.” 

“Si. Our arrows fail, and- Hah! 

Down, you fiend!” His rifle jumped, and a head 
rising beyond the right front wall was gone. 

“-and we go in and starve,” he went on, 

pumping his lever. “I would rather stay out and 

fight to the end, but the women- Ho! 

Santa Maria! We have no women—we all are 
fighting men! Look!” 

For the first time both noticed that those wait¬ 
ing women and children were armed, and that 
the faces which recently had been distorted with 
terror now were set in desperate resolution. The 
ancient weapons of the Almagros, the useless 
guns of the dead guards, the knives of the 
kitchen, all had been gathered up and were 
clutched in the hands of the women and boys of 
the Pachac tribe. 

“That is the answer—death now in the open, 
not death like starving rats!” vowed Jose, his 
eyes snapping. “To the walls, all of us! Let 


He staggered. So did McKay. The ground 
was quivering again. 






THE MOUNTAINS SPEAK 


325 


For a moment the fighting died. Defenders 
and assailants alike felt that tremor, heard a 
muffled growl in the mountains looming around. 
Savage and civilized men felt an unnerving sink¬ 
ing at the stomach, a chill along the spine. And 
the women and children, though stoically re¬ 
solved to meet death fighting to the end against 
their encompassing human foes, cried out and 
sprang from the doorway as the floor crept be¬ 
neath their feet. 

The ground became motionless and the growl¬ 
ing ceased. For a few seconds the tense silence 
held. Then a rifle shot cracked, and Tim’s gruff 
voice exulted: “Yah! Ye dirty butcher, how 
d’ye like that?” 

A new yell of fury outside answered. Again 
arrows thudded against the house roof. A howl 
of defiance broke from the men of Pachac. The 
hopeless battle was on again. 

“That settles it!” granted McKay. “If we 
get a bad shock the house may go. Get them out 
in the open!” 

They were all outside already, and they stayed 
out. McKay and Jose parted. The captain 
loped to a section at the left front where several 
of the white Indians had been shot down, and 
where the other defenders were out of arrows. 
He clambered up just in time to blow away two 
fierce faces which topped the wall. To his dis¬ 
may, he found no Jiveros now in sight. They 
had rushed in and were close to the stones, work- 


TIGER RIVER 


326 

ing upward in force. He grimly held his fire, 
awaiting the rising of the next heads. 

Jose, working along the left wall, found the 
same condition. Knowlton, whose hot gun was 
the only firearm on that section, was doggedly 
firing as his chance came; but the Indians on his 
runway now were looking desperately around for 
clubs, loose stones, anything with which to con¬ 
tinue their fight. Their bows were becoming 
useless, both because they had nothing to shoot 
and little to shoot at—for here, too, the Jiveros 
had closed in. Even as Jose looked along the 
weakening line he saw Knowlton hand his rifle to 
the nearest Indian for use as a club, draw his 
pistol, and loosen his machete. He clamped his 
jaws and jammed his four remaining cartridges 
into his own gun. Close work was at hand. 

Tim and Rand, with their Indian fighting 
mates, were in similar straits. Tim had already 
shot his rifle out and now was working along with 
his pistol, drilling the upshooting heads. Rand 
was even worse ofl—his automatic had jammed, 
and pounding on the wall failed to loosen its 
action. And here, as on the other sides, the 
head-shrinkers were climbing in ever-increasing 
numbers. 

Yet no man of the garrison left his wall. No 
man even thought of it. McKay, with his rifle, 
and Tim and Knowlton with their hand guns, 
were shooting faster and faster. Jose sprang on 
the top of the stones and chopped with red 


THE MOUNTAINS SPEAK 


327 

machete. Indians who had clubs followed his 
example, crushing skulls with hoarse grunts of 
satisfaction. Indians who had none yelled to 
the women below to pass up their weapons. 

Instead of complying, the women themselves 
climbed the ladders and, with knife and ax and 
ancient muzzle loader, attacked the slayers and 
slavers crawling up and over at them. 

Huarma and her sisters, the daughters of 
Pachac, rose beside Jose and, screaming hate into 
the ears of the encroaching Jiveros, swung the 
clubbed guns of the late guards down on head 
after head. The other women of Pachac, with 
whatever weapons they had gleaned from the 
house, hacked and clubbed and stabbed. The 
men of Pachac grappled barehanded with an¬ 
tagonists who snaked themselves up to a footing. 
From somewhere roared the voice of Pachac 
himself, howling in ferocious joy as he smashed 
the skulls of his enemies. And the Americans, 
though a few cartridges still were left, sheathed 
their pistols and joined the hand-to-hand conflict 
with slashing steel. All along the top of the wall 
the last furious death grapple was in full swing. 

“Hah!” shrilled the voice of Jose. “A fight 
of fights! Kill! Men of Pachac—women of 
Pachac—kill! Fight to the end! Kill!” 

Suddenly a flare of orange flame shot high in 
the northwestern sky. A roaring inferno of noise 
burst among the mountains. The ground heaved 
like a rolling sea. 


TIGER RIVER 


328 

A grinding, cracking crash of collapsing stones 
and timbers echoed from the house of the Al- 
magros. A deep stroke boomed from the big 
bell in the yard, terminating in a thumping jangle 
as it fell. 

The walls, with their battling antagonists still 
heaving and clubbing and grappling, pitched out¬ 
ward in a harsh rumble of sliding stone. A long 
scream rang across the gulf. Then fell an awful 
silence. 


CHAPTER XXIX 

OUT OF THE WALL 


R AIN hissed down. 

Cold, heavy, thick and fast it deluged a 
jumble of stones and timbers which had 
been a house; sluiced along between lines of 
other stones which had been walls; washed red 
stains from contorted men sprawling motionless 
on the sides of a knoll; beat back the senses of 
other men who groaned, stirred, sat up, stared 
dizzily around. Then it slid away down the hill¬ 
sides, collected in new-born streams, snaked along 
depressions, and, at the bottom of the gulf, crept 
upward again in a shallow but steadily rising 
pool. 

In the memories of the first men to regain con¬ 
sciousness echoed receding yells of fear and the 
slap of bare feet fleeing into the jungle. Now 
from the wrecked walls a new sound crept into 
the swish and splash of the rain—moans of 
crushed and mangled fighters not yet dead but 
dying. Into the horrid chorus broke other noises 
—cries of men, women, children, revived by the 
wet chill and staggering up from the ground to 
learn the fate of those whom they held most 
dear. 

Through the blurring sheets of falling water 
3 2 9 


330 


TIGER RIVER 


lurched indistinct figures holding arms before 
their faces to fend the drowning deluge from 
mouths and nostrils, peering about for relatives 
or friends, calling with voices growing sharper 
as those whom they sought remained silent. Then 
over all bellowed a fog-horn voice erupting from 
a tattered figure in dripping khaki, from whose 
red beard drizzled a stream of rain turned pink 
by a bleeding nose. 

“Cap! Looey! Dave! Hozy! Where are 
ye?” 

For a time none of the voices for which he 
listened made any response. Other voices in 
plenty arose; some in joy of reunion, some in 
repeated shouts of certain names, some in dull 
groans of pain. Other forms came blundering 
into his path, but all were those of Indians who 
peered at him and then stepped away on their 
own quests. Again and again he roared through 
the unceasing tumult of the downpour. Then he 
jumped ahead, drawing his machete. 

A tumbling thing on the ground a little farther 
on became two things. One of them pitched to 
its feet and glowered down from its six-foot 
height at a naked huddle of flesh which twitched 
a few times and became quiet. As Tim pounded 
up it turned sharply, and the bloody-nosed vet¬ 
eran looked into the swollen face and blazing 
eyes of McKay. Under him lay a powerful Ji- 
vero with head twisted aside. 

“Huh! Don’t ye know this here war’s gone 


OUT OF THE WALL 


33i 

bust, cap?” demanded the red man, slapping his 
commander joyously on one shoulder. “Enemy’s 
beat it for the woods, screechin’ their heads off 
—them that ain’t jellied under them stones. 
What ye got to pick on this feller for?—bad 
cess to him!” 

McKay essayed a grin, tried to answer, made 
a wheezing sound, and rubbed his throat, in 
which showed the prints of big Jivero fingers. 

“Awright, never mind apologizin’. Ye sure 
busted this guy’s neck right. Come on, le’s git 
the rest o’ the gang.” 

Together they forged on along the tumbled 
mass of stone, squinting sharply at every pros¬ 
trate form they found, the captain turning his 
aching neck at times from side to side. 

“I figger they got slung out, same as I did,” 
Tim roared conversationally. “I got throwed 
clear and lit on my nose and went to sleep 
awhile. Dang near busted me neck, I guess— 
she feels sort o’ crackly now. How come ye to 
keep that Jivero o’ yourn? Fall on him?” 

“Yes. Got thrown end over end. Struck on 
my stomach—also on his head. Knocked us 
both out.” 

“Uh-huh. And then ye both come alive and 
done a dog-eat-dog stunt, hey? Oh, loo-oo-ooey! 
Da-a-ave! Hoz-” 

“Here!” came Knowlton’s voice. Around a 
corner of the leveled walls a vague shape came 
stumbling as if hurt. In a few more steps it 



332 


TIGER RIVER 


became the lieutenant, shielding his face with 
one arm. The other hung at his side. 

“Good!” he exclaimed. “You two are still 
on your legs. Where’s Dave?” 

“Dunno yet. What ails ye? Bust somethin’?” 

“Shoulder’s out of joint. Wrenched this leg 
somehow, too, but it’s whole. Handsome nose 
you’ve got, Tim.” 

“Yeah? She feels like a dill pickle. Seen 
Hozy? Any Jiveros around that side?” 

“Jose’s all right. He’s hunting around now 
for Pachac. No Jiveros, except dead ones. 
Must be a frightful mess under the wall—they 
were packed three deep when the rocks went 
over them.” 

“So much the better for us,” was McKay’s 
comment. “You sit down under this tree and let 
us snap that shoulder back. Then wait while 
we find Dave. He was on the other wall. Got 
any cartridges?” 

“Nope. Shot out.” 

McKay dived a hand at the lieutenant’s hol¬ 
ster, drew out the empty pistol, replaced it with 
his own. The three moved to the shelter of the 
big tree near by, where Tim braced his feet and 
held the blond man tight. McKay, with an out¬ 
ward pull, drew the dislocated shoulder back into 
place. Knowlton went white and leaned against 
the trunk. 

“You won’t need a gun, probably,” added 
the captain, “but you’d better have one on. 


OUT OF THE WALL 333 

That one’s loaded. Stick here until we come 
back.” 

He and Tim turned and squelched away 
through the streaming grass in search of Rand. 
Now that all others of their five-cornered part¬ 
nership were accounted for, they gave no atten¬ 
tion to the shifting figures or the medley of noises 
around them, except to watch for any belated 
Jivero creeping out of the debris and seeking 
escape. They saw none such, for every head¬ 
hunter able to get away had gone long ago, 
shocked witless by the cataclysm. 

After passing the next corner, however, they 
slowed and began careful inspection along the 
line marking the right wall, where Rand had 
last been seen. Here the ruins seemed to have 
fallen both ways, as if the convulsed earth 
had twisted like a wounded snake, heaving 
some parts of the roughly cemented barrier 
outward while others toppled in toward the 
house. As they advanced, the rain began 
to decrease and the wreckage became more 
plain. 

Along it was proceeding work of mingled suc¬ 
cor and slaughter. Men of Pachac, armed with 
spears and clubs picked up from the sodden 
ground, were using them as levers to pry loose 
members of their own tribe or as weapons to 
exterminate Jiveros trapped among the stones. 
No quarter was given or asked. Head-hunters 
died with fierce defiance on their faces, savage 


334 


TIGER RIVER 


to the last. The Americans saw, scowled, but 
said nothing. It was the primal law of the 
jungle—kill or be killed. 

Some distance down the wet stones, they 
paused. There a little knot of white Indians, 
themselves smeared red from hurts received in 
the collapse, were working carefully to extri¬ 
cate a half-crushed man of their race. One of 
them, spying the American pair, pointed down¬ 
ward and grunted rapidly. Though the words 
meant little to the listeners, they saw in the 
Indian face something that brought them up on 
the rocks. There the aborigine pointed at 
McKay’s boots, then down under the trapped 
man. 

“Cripes! Must be Dave I” guessed Tim. 
“Pair o’ boots in there, under this hurt guy!” 

Their eyes met. Then each looked quickly 
away. If Rand was caught under those 
stones- 

Restraining their impulse to jump in and help 
—for more men would only hinder the work— 
they stood tensely waiting while the hole was 
enlarged and the Indian drawn out, his face gray 
with suffering but his jaws clamped tight. Then 
they got a look into the ruin. 

“Poor Davey!” McKay muttered. 

They saw a dead Jivero. From below him, 
between his right arm and his side, projected a 
booted leg. 

For a moment they stood motionless, dreading 



OUT OF THE WALL 


335 


the sight of the mangled form which must lie 
beneath that of the enemy. Then they started. 
The leg had moved! 

It strained weakly as if trying to draw itself 
back. The foot quivered, jerked from side to 
side, grew still. 

McKay scanned the rocks rimming the open¬ 
ing. They were loosely balanced, likely at any 
moment to slip and drop. He indicated a couple 
which must be held or braced. The Indians re¬ 
maining—two had carried away their injured 
comrade—stepped to the menacing blocks and 
strained back against them. McKay and Tim 
stooped, braced themselves, and, with a slow, 
careful pull, drew the Jivero up and away from 
his death trap. Pitching him outward, they 
reached again and grasped the boots, both now 
exposed. With another steady draw they lifted 
Rand. 

He was lying aslant, head much lower than 
his feet, curved in a strained position in a 
crooked cavern of jagged stones. If he had 
been conscious when that foot moved, he now 
had lost his senses again. His face, appearing 
from a dim crevice as he was raised by the legs, 
was dark and bloated from suffocation. Under 
him the rescuers glimpsed a welter of smashed 
things which had been men. 

They drew him up and bore him away down 
the slippery rocks. The Indians loosed their 
holds on the stones and skipped aside. The 


TIGER RIVER 


336 

blocks grated, slid, and fell with a sullen crunch 
into the place where Rand had lain. 

Out on good ground they laid him down and 
tore off his shirt, which hung in ripped rags. 
McKay felt for his heart. It was beating. 

“Glory be!” rejoiced Tim, interpreting the 
slight relaxation of his captain’s face. “Be- 
gorry, he ain’t hardly scratched, neither! Head’s 
all right—legs look straight—arms all sound— 
how’s the ribs? Caved? Nope. Say, them 
dead guys jest sort o’ cushioned him. Squeezed 
him black in the face, but that’s all. Gee, talk 
about luck!” 

And a few minutes later, sitting groggily up 
and blinking at the figures which seemed whirling 
around him, Rand proved Tim’s words true. His 
frame was whole, though wrenched and strained. 
His constricted lungs were functioning normally 
again, the congestion of blood had left his head, 
and the few cuts and bruises he had received 
were of no consequence. Yet, but for the fact 
that a living man of Pachac happened to be 
caught above him and attract the attention of 
other Indians, he would have been squeezed to 
death down in the chaotic rubble long before he 
could have been found. He owed his life to pure 
luck. 

“ ’Lo, Rod,” he mumbled. “Where’s— 

Merry? What happened?” 

“Merry’s holding up a tree and waiting. 
Nothing much happened. Volcanic explosion 


OUT OF THE WALL 


337 

somewhere up north—earthquake—everything 
tumbled down, including us. Jiveros are mostly 
buried. Now we’re all taking a shower bath. 
That’s all. Feel like walking?” 

Rand dizzily shook his head. But after a 
minute the surroundings stopped whizzing 
around him, and he began struggling up. His 
mates promptly aided him to his feet. Arm in 
arm, the three passed back down the line to re¬ 
join Knowlton. And as they went, the rain 
ceased. 

In the clearing air they saw Knowlton’s blond 
head bobbing along beyond the rock jumble 
which had been the front wall, and before they 
reached the corner he came limping around it, his 
face beaming at sight of the rescued man. He 
halted and waited, gave Rand a slap on the back 
as they passed, and fell in behind. Reunited once 
more, the four went on to find Jose. 

As they passed on, their minds now at ease 
regarding one another, they saw in stark detail 
the work of the sudden spasm of nature. The 
house and the walls were stone heaps. From 
them now sounded no more of the half-conscious 
moans; for the injured men of Pachac had died 
in their traps or were being taken out, while all 
the Jiveros caught alive had been executed. Here 
and there protruded a hand or a foot of some 
warrior who never again would fight. At inter¬ 
vals lay broken white Indians attended by little 
groups of their own people. And at one spot 


TIGER RIVER 


338 

was a number of bodies lying side by side on the 
soaked earth. Among them were a few women 
—the fighting women who had gone to death 
like men. 

In the hillside itself gaped narrow fissures. 
Beyond, the faces of the mountains were altered. 
Bare slides grinned out where had been un¬ 
broken green. In the precipice along which the 
four had toiled not many days ago yawned new 
crevasses. Many other changes, of which the 
Americans never learned, had been wrought 
around them. One, of which they were not to 
remain long in ignorance, was that the mine of 
the Almagros was no more. Another was that 
the underground passage through which Jose 
and his people had entered this place was blocked 
forever. 

As they rounded the corner beyond which Jose 
had last been seen, they found no sign of him. 
In the thin mist now rising from the drying 
ground moved only the forms of the Indian gar¬ 
rison and their women. They were alternately 
giving attention to their less fortunate fellows 
and scanning the jungle. 

“If those Jiveros come back now-” mut¬ 

tered Rand. 

“Huh! Come back from where, feller?” de¬ 
manded Tim. “Under them there rocks? That’s 
where dang near all of ’em are. Them that got 
clear are runnin’ yet, and ye won’t-” 

A sudden yell cut him short. It came from the 



OUT OF THE WALL 


339 


rear end of the mass which had been the House. 
Up there the startled four saw the missing Jose. 
He had been clambering around to get a compre¬ 
hensive view of the devastation. Now he was 
prancing and waving his arms as if demented. 

“Senores!” came his shout. “Come here I El 
oro!” 

“What! The gold?” burst in one amazed 
chorus from the battered soldiers of fortune. 

“Si! We have it at last! Valgame Dios, it 

is a treasure like that of the Incas! It is- 

See ! With your own eyes come and look! Santa 
Maria! What a yellow gleam!” 

Still throwing his arms about, he disappeared 
down the rubble of stone and timber. Afire with 
excitement, the Americans leaped away along the 
line, even Knowlton forgetting his painful leg. 
Climbing over the ruins of the wall between, they 
joined Jose, and stood petrified at what they saw. 

From the space where the rear wall had stood 
now slanted a pile of yellow bars. That wall, 
buckling outward, had spewed out with its stones 
what had been piled just behind those stones. 
There, in one gleaming heap, lay tons of the 
precious mineral. How many more tons were 
concealed within the ruin no man dared guess. 

“See, it is as you said, Tim and capitan! Be¬ 
hold that wall—it ran from the vault to the end 
of the house. It was hollow—it has not so much 
stone as the other wall. There was a passage 
in it—some way of swinging aside blocks in the 



TIGER RIVER 


340 

vault—another entrance here at the house. The 
house had a double rear wall with much space 
between the two—I have thought before now 
that somehow the house seemed longer outside 
than inside, but I never thought to measure. And 
the gold was piled to the roof! Por Dios! 
There may be an underground space, too—there 
may be-” 

His voice cracked. Dazedly the others fol¬ 
lowed his gestures as he talked and danced about. 
They saw that he had hit the truth. Their eyes 
came back and clung to the golden glory rising 
from their feet to the wrecked treasure room of 
the Almagros. Then they sank down on the 
nearest stones and dumbly fumbled in their soggy 
clothing for something with which to make 
cigarettes. 

So, at last, fickle Fate had thrown at the 
fighting five the golden lure which she had 
dangled so long before their eyes. And the grim 
mountains of the Pastassa spurs, which had held 
the merciless Almagros in their unyielding grip 
until no Almagro was left, now had smashed all 
their handiwork into chaos. A little while, and 
the gulf where they had lived and died would be 
a noisome pest hole. And the booty wrung 
from the bowels of the stone by four generations 
of torture and treachery would go out on the 
backs of men who fought hard—but fought clean. 



CHAPTER XXX 

THE KING OF NO MAN’S LAND 


T HE banks of the Tigre Yacu were full. 

Between the shores where, a few weeks 
ago, clear water had crept languidly along 
at the bottom of a rock-strewn natural ditch, 
now rolled a turbid flood; and from both sides 
sounded the plash and gurgle of smaller streams 
hurrying in with the burden of water dumped on 
the hillsides by the latest rain. Now the sun had 
broken out again, and from every dripping leaf 
sparkled gems of moisture. 

In a little cove, where the downward-sweeping 
waters slowed and swung about in a wheeling 
eddy, a grotesque object floated and tugged at its 
moorings of stout bush-rope; a nondescript crea¬ 
tion such as the mysterious Tigre Yacu, which 
before now had washed many a weird thing 
southward in its eternal journey from the cor¬ 
dillera to the Maranon, never had upheld on 
its restless bosom. Two stout canoes, covered 
over, formed its nucleus; reinforced with logs, 
they upheld a platform with built-up sides and 
curving roof. A combination of balsa, pon¬ 
toon, raft, and box, it was, and as ugly a 
vessel as ever traveled jungle waters. Yet, for 
all its homeliness, it was a treasure ship, 
341 


342 


TIGER RIVER 


The boxlike platform held a fortune in pure 
gold. 

Now the men who had created it stood lined 
along the bank: four Americans, one hawk-faced 
Spaniard, and some forty Indians whose skins 
were only a shade darker than those revealed by 
rips in the cldthing of the khaki-clad white men. 
Near the lean South American loitered a number 
of lithe young women whose dark eyes turned to 
him at his every word or movement. Farther 
back were a sprinkling of other women and 
children. 

These were the survivors of the no-quarter 
battle with the Jiveros and the earth convulsion 
which had crushed that fight into nothingness at 
its desperate height; the five partners and the 
death-thinned people of Pachac. Among them 
Pachac himself no longer stood. 

Caught and killed in the collapse of the wall 
he was holding, he had passed out as he would 
have wished—in the flaming fury of hand-to- 
hand battle with his foes. Now the commander 
of the tribe was the man whom he had taken as 
foster-son—Jose Martinez, outlaw, killer, and 
son of the Conquistadores. 

For days after the wrecking of the house of 
the Almagros, every able-bodied man, woman, 
and child had toiled feverishly at the great gold 
pile, the white men driven by their own treasure 
hunger and the Indians by the crackling voice of 
their Spanish chief. From dawn to dark, with 


THE KING OF NO MAN’S LAND 343 

hardly a pause to snatch food from the planta¬ 
tion, they had transported the yellow bars in a 
steady stream to a spot well up the nearest moun¬ 
tain, where the air was fresh and clean. For¬ 
tunately, the sky had remained overcast much 
of the time, and, as often happens in the Andes 
region after an earthquake, the air had been de¬ 
cidedly cold. Thus favored, the toilers had b£en 
able to labor long in the midst of the ruins be¬ 
fore the sun turned hot and the air became pes¬ 
tilential. By the time they were compelled 
to flee, the place had been quite thoroughly 
looted. 

Even had it been possible and desirable to 
extract and bury or burn the dead and recon¬ 
struct the demolished house, the grim decree of 
the mountains forbade it. Not only had they 
plugged the natural drain of the gulf in their 
spasm, but at every fresh rainfall they sluiced 
more water into the pool which had formed and 
was stealthily creeping farther and higher along 
the bottom and sides of the misshapen bowl. 
Henceforth no man should live in the chasm 
where so much of human maltreatment and 
misery had resulted from their first admittance 
of men. When the deluges of the forthcoming 
wet season should end, the sinister knoll and its 
stones and bones would be sunk under a stagnant 
lagoon wherein only reptilian creatures could 
spawn; and the Almagros, after all their ruth¬ 
lessness and strife, should lie forgotten forever 


344 


TIGER RIVER 


in a bed of slime. So the stern giants towering 
around had determined, and so it should be. 

But none of those who toiled to salvage the 
treasure trove had any desire to remain. As soon 
as their prize was safe they sought a way out, 
eager to be gone for all time from that hole. 
And, thanks to the jungle craft of the nomads of 
Pachac, they found at length an exit whereby 
they could reach again the vague path by which 
they had journeyed up the Tigre. Thanks also 
to the Indians, they lived off the forest and the 
bush while the gold was brought out and packed 
down the trail and while the clumsy river craft 
was built and loaded. 

Nowhere had they met Jiveros. But, a few 
days after the earthquake, they had heard the 
drums off to the west begin to grumble again, 
and guessed that the survivors of the savage 
expedition had returned to their own land with 
their tale of doom. Nor had they seen again 
any sign of the gaunt green-dyed servitors of 
Flora Almagro who had speared the escaping 
toeless man and forced the American adven¬ 
turers over the edge of the abyss. What had 
become of them only the inscrutable jungle 
could tell; and, as always, the jungle remained 
dumb. 

Now the time for parting was at hand. And 
for a time no word was said. Wistfully, yet 
proudly, Jose stood among his people and looked 
at his four comrades who were leaving him. Like 


THE KING OF NO MAN’S LAND 345 

his men, he wore on his body only the loin mat 
of the white Indians; but, unlike them, he re¬ 
tained around his shaggy head a faded red ker¬ 
chief, and in one hand he held his battered old 
rifle: his crown and his scepter as king of the 
little tribe. Down one bare leg, too, dangled his 
machete. 

None of his hard-won gold was on the bank. 
In fact, it was miles away, secreted in a cave 
which he had discovered just outside the moun¬ 
tains ringing the gulf. His only visible posses¬ 
sions now were his gun, his bush-knife, and the 
partly filled tin of .44 cartridges which the 
Americans previously had left with the updrawn 
canoes. 

“No, senores, I will not have my share of the 
treasure carried farther,” he had said when 
making his cache. ‘‘Of what good is it to me? 
Now that I have it, I can think of only one use 
for it; and the time to use it so has not yet come. 
You are eager to go out, while I—where should 
I go? Let us move on with your gold. Mine 
will keep here.” 

The Americans, though asking no questions, 
had guessed at what he intended eventually to 
do with his prize—and had guessed wrong. 
Now, standing beside their laden craft, they 
thought of it again. McKay bluntly spoke out. 

“Where do you expect to hang out after you 
leave here, Jose? We’d like to keep in touch 
with you. Going back over the Andes to gild the 


TIGER RIVER 


346 

palms of the authorities and enjoy life? Or 
down the Amazon? Or over to Europe?” 

A slow smile passed over the outlaw’s face 
and died. He answered with the cool dignity 
of a caballero. 

“Once, capitan, a misbegotten creature arose 
between us—a burro with a bull head. It came 
up because you had a thought like the one you 
have now. But it shall not lift its head again. 

“You think the natural thing, capitan, but you 
have it wrong. I, Jose Martinez, return across 
the Andes and buy the favor of officials? Bah! 
Who throws meat to yelping dogs which are too 
far off to bite him? Not I. Still less do I jour¬ 
ney to those dogs and drop the meat into their 
greedy jaws. 

“And down the Amazon, or across the sea, 
should I be content? No. I have been too long 
a wild rover of the jungle. In the jungle I stay.” 

His eyes went to the girls near him, and again 
his lips widened—this time in the sardonic grin 
of Jose the bushman. 

“And if I would desert my brides, amigos— 
for they never could come with me into the cities, 
and I must abandon them if I go—if I thought 
of forsaking my little tigresses of the Tigre 
Yacu, there is another reason why I should stand 
by them.” 

The four looked into his twinkling eyes, then 
at his girl wives. 

“What! Already?” blurted Knowlton. 


THE KING OF NO MAN’S LAND 347 

“Why not, senor?” laughed the other. “Did 
I not once say to you that if we Spaniards would 
pause at times between our fighting and our gold 
hunting we could people the world with fighting 
men? And every man should prove his words 
by deeds, is it not true ? Unless Huarma and her 
sisters and I are much mistaken, soon there will 
be five little Joses asking me for little guns to 
play with.” 

“Gee gosh!” muttered Tim. 

“Quite so, Senor Tim. And that is not all. 
The four sisters of my wives have decided that 
they also should become brides of their chief. 
And who am I that I should deny them? So all 
the nine daughters of Pachac become the wives 
of the son of Pachac.” 

McKay threw up his hands. 

“Come on, fellows,” he said. “He’s raving. 
Let’s go.” 

“One moment, capitan,” laughed the white 
chief. “Help me with a problem. With sons each 
year for twenty years, how many shall I have?” 

The captain shook his head and glanced at the 
boat. Rand answered. 

“Barring twins, one hundred and eighty.” 

“Oof!” grunted Tim. “Cap, ye’re right. 
He’s crazy as a bedbug. Hozy, jest wait till 
the first nine all git to squallin’ together, and 
ye’ll never wait for the other hundred and sev¬ 
enty-odd. Ye’ll come a-runnin’ and jump into 
this here river, squeakin’: ‘Here goes nothin’ ’!” 


TIGER RIVER 


348 

“You do not know me, comrade,” chuckled 
Jose. “If they vex me I shall go out and kill a 
few Jiveros. That is one reason why I stay—to 
kill Jiveros.” 

“A laudable ambition,” conceded Knowlton. 
“But where does your gold fit into your plans? 
None of my business, maybe, but-” 

“But why is it not your business, friend? I 
will tell you what is in my mind.” 

He looked along the line of his adopted peo¬ 
ple, and his face sobered. 

“There was a time, before I had fought 
against those Jiveros, when I had for them some 
respect. I said to you that, if my head must be 
taken by any man, I would wish it to go to those 
fighting wild men. But since I have fought them, 
since I saw the headless bodies of those poor fel¬ 
low slaves of mine who were cut to pieces on 
the plantation, since I have heard the true tales 

of them told by Pachac and his people- No, 

I have no respect for those accursed ones! They 
are beasts! 

“Now, as you say, I have gold. Now that I 
have gold, it means little to me—the gold itself. 
It was a bait, a lure, a thing that kept me striv¬ 
ing on in spite of death and the devil. And 
that struggle to get it, senores, the fighting and 
adventure and hope and despair—that was the 
real prize—that was living! And far above all 
those things, amigos, I treasure the memories of 
the days and nights I have spent with my North 




THE KING OF NO MAN’S LAND 349 

American comrades: men I could trust, men 
I could like, men in whose company I could 
sleep without awaking to find a knife near my 
throat. 

“But that time is past, and you go. Now I 
look to what is ahead of Jose—-and of the people 
of Jose. I have looked on the mountains to the 
north and found them good. Not that hole of 
the Almagros, but the great wild cordillera 
which no man owns; where the shrinkers of heads 
travel, where more gold lies waiting, where the 
law of the yellow-dog men of the western cities 
does not reach. I will make those mountains 
mine I” 

The old flush of enthusiasm was rising in his 
cheeks, the old ring creeping into his voice. 

“Si! Mine! I will not be a petty chief of a 
vagabond tribe—-I will be a king of the wild 
lands! A barbarian king, perhaps, as you said 
not long ago—but a ruler of hard fighting men, 
a maker of war on the demons who shrink the 
heads of men and make beasts of women. Si! 
I, Jose! 

“Behold these people of Pachac. They have 
no tribe name that I can recognize. They call 
themselves only The White Ones. No, not 
Yameos. The White Ones. And in other parts 
of this thick country between the spurs, and 
north toward the Curaray, are more of The 
White Ones. So these tell me. They tell me, 
too, that they can lead me to some of those other 


350 


TIGER RIVER 


White Ones* and from them we shall learn of 
still more. All are bitter haters of the Jiveros. 

“Now for my gold. Already that young half- 
Spanish son of Pachac had trained a few of these 
men to use rifles. I shall carry on what he began. 
With my gold I trade for more guns—and I get 
the best! I buy many cartridges. I bring to¬ 
gether the other White Ones. And there in the 
mountains we make a stronghold that shall make 
that one of the Almagros seem a house of clay. 
We drive the Jiveros howling west to the Mo- 
rona—to the Santiago! Por Dios, we sweep 
them back against the Great Cordillera itself!” 

The four stood fascinated as the magnitude of 
his ambition fired them. Then Rand spoke. 

“And then, the first thing you know, you’ll be 
at war with two governments.” 

“Si ? The government of Peru, which has cast 
me out? The government of Ecuador, which 
cannot rule what it claims? They cannot even 
agree on their own boundaries, as you senores 
must know. Ecuador calls this its Provincia del 
Oriente, but what does it mean? Nothing. And 
to me the paper laws and decrees of both of them 
are nothing. This is No Man’s Land, and I 
will be its king!” 

“Begorry, it’s jest like what I said!” exulted 
Tim. “Didn’t I tell ye so, Dave, down by that 
red-hot lake? The King o’ No Man’s Land, 
jest like I seen it cornin’! And I’ll tell the world 
ye’ll make one rip-roarin’ king, too, ye ol’ scala- 


THE KING OF NO MAN'S LAND 351 

wag. Dang it, I wisht I could stick round awhile. 

If I only had a new outfit- But shucks, I 

got to git me money home. So long, ol’-timer, 
and more power to ye!” 

He reached a red-haired fist and gave the chief 
of The White Ones a mighty grip. In turn the 
others followed his example. Then they clam¬ 
bered aboard their treasure ship, set themselves 
at the powerful steering oar they had built, and 
nodded to Jose. 

Slowly, regretfully, the outlaw lifted his 
machete to sever the bush-ropes mooring the 
straining craft. 

“Adios, camaradas!” he called. 

“Hasta luego,” countered McKay. 

“What! You will come back some day?” 

“Never can tell. We might get bored and 
come looking for some excitement.” 

“Hah! Come to me in the mountains and I 
will feed you excitement until you choke! Until 
then- Yaya con Dios! Go with God!” 

The blade chopped down. The craft swung 
outward and checked. Again the steel fell, 
shearing another rope, and it floated free. 

In a final chorus of yells it gathered headway 
and surged downstream, its crew swinging at the 
long rudder. Then it settled itself for its long 
voyage to the mighty Maranon. Hands shot up 
in the last gesture of farewell. Around a slight 
bend it drifted, and the jungle of the Tigre 
Yacu blotted it from sight. 




352 


TIGER RIVER 


For a time the red-crowned man at the water’s 
edge stood motionless, his face somber, his dark 
eyes dwelling wistfully on the spot where his 
partners had vanished. Then, with a sigh, he 
stooped and lifted the case of cartridges to His 
shoulder. 

Upstream he turned, warily scanning the bush. 
Upstream the armed warriors and the rest of 
the little tribe silently followed him. And into 
the green shadows the coming King of No Man’s 
Land and the nucleus of his army of The White 
Ones passed and were gone. 


THE END 


16 H ’31 



























































































